Friendship and the Friendship of God

I'm just back from a weekend retreat with the theological college my wife attends. I had attended a couple of these retreats before and while we were going out, so I jumped at the chance this year to go, partly because I really love this community and partly because it was a good chance to have a rest before the craziness of a new school year begins.

We had a couple good speakers this year; one of whom talked about Christian friendship. While I was listening, I began to think a bit about friendship in general which, I would suggest, has become rather impoverished over the last century or two, particularly male friendship. Close friendships were not at all unusual in societies in many cultures and in many times. In fact, it was believed that male friendship was one of the primary loyalties which people could have. Further, these friendships included a level of emotion which we, today, would either squirm in discomfort to hear or would assume that the two friends speaking were, in fact, gay. For instance, Cicero wrote hundreds of letters to Atticus in which he would express his longing to see his friend and his sense of loss in his friends' absence or giving his friend the news of the day in Rome or in Cicero's own family.

What confounds me (and worries me) is the degree to which this language and practice of friendship has become sexualized. That is, if we used the language of Cicero today with a friend, there is a very good chance it would be either mis-interpreted as a pass or would be regarded as evidence of a gay relationship. It seems that the only close male relationship that our culture can conceive is one that is sexualized. That is, perhaps, hyperbolic, but I wonder sometimes how much.

Yet, as the speaker at the retreat pointed out, it is these bonds of friendship which serve as one of the ways that communities function. It is in mutual friendship and all that entails which permits our faith communities to build the bonds that unite us. That cohesion is something wonderful to see and to experience, but it is not always present in our Christian communities. That is sad and worrying because it means that we really lost our way as a people, if we cannot even unite as individual communities.

This entry sounds pessimistic, I know. Yet, the scene is not all black. I know that my own life has been profoundly influenced both by close Christian friends (and some non-Christian ones, of course) and by healthy supportive communities (such as the college whose retreat I attended this weekend) where the bonds of friendship are strong. I have no doubt in the world that I would be a lot worse off in life without these influences. I think that is true of an awful lot of people, Christians and non-Christians. We haven't lost that God-given gift of friendship because it is simply too ingrained in our souls for us to lose it altogether. That is a grace for which we should praise God and which give me hope for the future.

At the end of the day, what binds all Christians together is that we have accepted the friendship of God and that we are all the means by which God reveals that friendship. A spiritual advisor once commented to me that, while I was fine with individual prayer, I really tended to struggle with allowing God to act through other people. I suspect one reason for that is that I'm introvert and I'd much rather huddle in a quiet corner to pray or meditate or read than to risk meeting or connecting with new people. My challenge, and, I think, the challenge of a lot of people, is to take the risks that friendship with God and with others entail. That risk usually produces real grace as I found on this weekend.

Peace,
Phil

Book Review-Darrell Bock, The Missing Gospels

I happened upon this book at Mitchell's Family Books last week, a Christian bookstore chain up here in Ontario and, on a bit of an impulse decision, decided to buy it. Well, given the subject matter, that wasn't a surprise. Even a quick glance at my blog over the last few months would reveal an interest in the 2nd century Fathers and the Gnostic problem which they faced and which we're facing again. What I've been hoping for and not seeing up to now has been a serious attempt to engage the popular use of the Gnostic Gospels. That doesn't mean it hasn't been done, I just haven't seen many books which have done it as well as this one.

What Dr. Bock does is really engage with both the alternative Gospels and the so-called new school which has used these newly found texts to drive a re-interpretation of Christianity in its first two centuries. In this interpretation (begun by Walter Bauer in the 1930s and continued by Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman), it is argued that Christianity in the first and second century AD was much more diverse than traditional, orthodox history has suggested. Indeed, what we know as orthodoxy is, in fact, really a third century phenomenon and the Christianity of the first and second centuries AD was a much more tolerant, human-centred religion than otherwise assumed. This view has become very influential these days and has fueled the explosion of books on alternative gospels.

I'm not going to go into the details of Dr. Bock's argument, but what he does is to take this approach seriously. He give background to the controversy, but, more importantly, he carefully goes through the alternative Gospels, the Bible, the Apostolic Fathers, and Justin Martyr (stopping very purposely before getting to St. Irenaeus, the great villain of the new school) to see just what they say about the nature of God and the Creation, the divinity and humanity of Jesus, human redemption and Jesus' death. His conclusions aren't surprising: the new school is distorting what the alternative gospels are saying and, yes, the new school is right about there being diversity in the early Church, but orthodoxy can be traced back to the period as a dominant force on the Christian scene.

Will this book change the mind of a devoted reader of Pagels or Ehrman? Probably not. The scholars' disputes over the dates of composition of the books of the canonical Bible and the alternative writings are simply too controversial to expect easy agreement on the priority of the orthodox view. Yet, Dr. Bock is very balanced in his approach, conceding what is good in the new school, but also criticizing its for its excesses. That was a pleasant surprise because I was afraid this would be just another ill-informed, knee-jerk polemic which we occasionally see coming out on popular Christian issues.

This book is worth a read for any orthodox Christian (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, evangelical, whatever) because it really does give us a resource to deal with people who get excited with the next fresh Gospel to appear. As we found with the Gospel of Judas controversy at Easter, there are always some who want to take traditional Christianity down a peg or two, preferably during a major holiday season. This book will help educate you on the issues and prepare you for the next 'new gospel' coming to a bookstore near you.

Peace,
Phil

Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog; Come, plunge the knife

Phil Harland on The Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog has posted an interesting entry on cultural bias against Jews and Christians in the Roman. It's an excellent post and well worth reading.

Meanwhile, I'm working by way through Bock's Missing Gospels and getting ready for the new school year. I am hoping to post a review of the Bock book in the next couple of days, so keep an eye out for that.

Peace,
Phil

Augustine and Me

This week, I've been thinking about conversion. To some degree, it is the time of year because it was in the fall of 1991 that I began the process of becoming a Christian. As I noted below in Why Patristics?, my wife likes to tell people that I'm the only person she knows who converted because of reading Augustine. That isn't quite the whole story, of course. No conversion story is quite this simple. My own conversion was the product of a vague searching for faith from my late teens on, a real intellectual interest in Christiain thinking, the good example of several Christians in my life and, above all, God's own grace in making me receptive to what was going on around me. Yet, didn't Augustine himself report the story of the two imperial officials who turned to a life of asceticism after reading a Life of Antony (Augustine, Confessions, 8,6) Why shouldn't the example of a long dead bishop, theologian and saint play a part in the conversion a young Master student more than fifteen hundred years later?

Why not, indeed? Still, I wonder sometimes what it was which attracted me so much to Augustine. Goodness knows that he has had more than his own share of critics over the ages. Besides, it wasn't as if I was reading him in a seminary or something where people would take his faith seriously. No, I was reading him in a course which I jokingly called "Beginners Intensive Augustine (its real title was Topics in Medieval History or something with a similar degree of academic blandness) in a secular university. Not exactly a setting conducive to experiencing the faith of such a man.

Yet, I think what caught my attention was Augustine's honesty in describing how God led him to faith. Like me, he spent a good amount of time investigating ideas and notions about spirituality. In fact, he spent rather more time and trouble to do so than I had. Yet, what I felt I had in common with him was that I was spending a lot of my time trying to figure out how to come closer to God, but I really just needed to stop and let God catch me. It was that sense of God's grace in Augustine' life, even when he was not being faithful, which made sense of my own growing sense of conversion. Augustine was one of my guides in the faith during those exciting, but disorienting months of my Christian life.

In Hebrews, we are assured that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews, 12,1). For me, Augustine was one of these witnesses, who set an example of faith and endurance during a difficult time. I don't pretend to be an Augustine expert. I really have only read the Confessions, The City of God, The Enchiridion, and On Christian Teaching. My theological understanding presumes a degree of Augustinianism, but, if I have to confess, that is also at second-hand. All that, however, isn't as important as the sense that Augustine was one of my guides in faith at a very impressionable time.

At the end of the course, the prof. asked us whether we thought that Augustine had any relevance today. My answer was that I did because I knew, from my own experience in the last months, he has made a major difference to my life. Of course, I got the predictable sceptical looks from the prof and my colleagues, but I think I touched one something which was true. Augustine (and the rest of the Fathers) remain important because they are among that cloud of witnesses which surround all of us. Their example and their thinking should remind us of God's grace in the lives of these all too fallable human beings. Setting aside their intellectual value (which is considerable), it is their spiritual value as witnesses which should catch the attention of all Christians.

Peace,
Phil

Why Bother with Theology?

This week, I've been involved in a discussion which began about a trivia question about a 1960s controversy about Bishop Pike of ECUSA and has headed into a discussion about heresy and whether belief really matters in the Christian life. Of course, this is hardly a new conversation. I've been posting on various Anglican boards for something like nine or ten years now and I think I fight this debate, at least, once or twice a year.

As usual, this debate got me thinking about the state of theological understanding in my church today. I admit that, in the first couple of years of my conversion, I was among those who maintained an amused skepticism around the idea of theology. As Humphreys said on Yes, Prime Minister(a British comedy which featured a bumbling politician being manipulated by his civil service advisors) when he identifies a candidate for the Archbishop of York as a theologian: "Theology is a way for unbelievers for staying in the Church".

To some extent, this cynicism is warranted. Academic theology has had a tendency to be very removed from Christian practice for many years. I know that friends who regularly go to the American Academy of Religion report a rarified atmosphere and, occasionally, bizarre disjunction with reality at this scholarly event. For the person in the pew, struggling to practice his/her Christianity, these discussions seem pointless.

Add to that the way that traditional doctrine has been taught in the past. Quite frequently, doctrine was something to be memorized, not understood. That is odd, given the admittedly bizarre things that we Christians are asked to believe: incarnation, resurrection, Virgin Birth and more. Is there any wonder why both doctrine and theology are held in so little esteem in the church?

Yet, I've changed my mind over the last eight or nine years. What ultimately changed my mind was the recognition that there is a reason why these doctrines have emerged the way they did and there are reasons why theology matters. At the end of the day, theology is an attempt to explain what we believe and to make what we do as Christians make sense. That means that, no matter how abstract a theological proposition is, it has be somehow related back to practice or to our understanding of what the Christian life is. Any theological proposition that can't do this is a proposition that can and should be forgotten about.

Theology's reason for existing is explanation and, in that sense, it is running commentary on Scripture and on the communal experience of the Church in Christ. Its value is to draw us closer into the story which defines us and in allowing us to understand how we should relate to a world which does not fully accept this story. Theology can explain faith to those who don't understand it. It can connect us to our faith story and reinforce us, even when times are bad. It can point to what is the right action by helping us to see what our faith demands in a given situation. At the end of the day, theology is God-talk, of all kinds. It isn't just rarified speculations on the origin of the world or on the number of angels on a pin. It is more important than all that. It is the grammar for our God-talk and, if we are to make any sense, we need to know what that grammar is.

Once I started to understand theology as a grammar, I began to get why it was important. I also began to want to see how good theologians use that grammar. What I found surprised me a bit. I found myself turning to those who understood the doctrines that I found hard to swallow and who explained how those doctrines fit into the grammar. I began to understand why taking out this or that doctrine causes ripples in how we think about faith, about God and about how we practice our Christian life. That caused me to want to read more theology and to think more theologically. I am a self-confessed theological auto-didact with all the defects...and all the benefits of that approach. Yet, I don't think I'd be writing quite this kind of blog without it, but, more importantly, I know my prayer and my practice have been informed by my readings in theology.

Theology will not, of course, save you or me. Nor, I would point out, will our Christian practices. Our salvation depends on the grace of God alone, not on our intellectual or physical efforts. Yet, both theology and practice matter. What I'm arguing here is that the solution to the debate I quote above isn't theological doctrine or practice. It is theology AND practice. If we are called, as we Anglicans love to say, to worshipping the Lord God with all our minds, all our hearts and all our souls, we need to pay attention to what theology says, what doctrine says, if we are to reflect on our mission today.

Peace,
Phil

Isaiah 2,22 and Protagoras

Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he? Isaiah 2,22

I ran across this line earlier this week while I was doing some devotional reading. For some reason, that morning I was really struck by it, not so much because of its sentiment which we find elsewhere in Scripture quite frequently, but I suspect because of what was the next thing which popped in my head: the well-known fragment of Protagoras:

Man is the measure of all things

Okay, that is an odd association, I grant you. Yet, it makes some sense to juxtrapose these two lines. After all, encapsulated in these two quotations, we find outselves right up against the difference between the anthropology of the Bible and that of not only classical antiquity, but modern humanism. Both quotations make bold statements about the place of humans in the universe. Both change our outlook on life and the world in profound ways.

In the Protagoras fragment, humanity becomes the standard by which the rest of the universe is evaluated and judged. We are the single most important beings in the world because we alone boast the ability for abstract thought and for judgements. We have the wisdom and the ability to make the world in our image. There is no need for the divine or for God or for gods because they are either hopeless distant and uninterested in human affairs, or they are simply non-existent. We are self-sufficient or, at least, we can be. We are enlightened. We alone can determine what is good and apply it to the world.

All this should sound familiar. Really, Protagoras' thinking is not so different from our own. We often, in practice, push God out of our consideration, thinking that we know better or that God is irrelevant when we deal with the problems we have. After all, if He was so great, why do we have to fix up his mess of a Creation? So, we'll find our own solutions, thank you very much.

Yet, when we read passages like Isaiah 2,22, we come crashing back to reality. At the end of a passage in which God paints a picture of a deluded humanity coming face to face with the folly of their exalted view of themselves and their refusal to trust in Him, the Creator of the world. Everything that makes us proud (possessions, power) will become worthless to us. All the idols we raise up for ourselves to try to hide God will be utterly useless. All the things that we think will save us will fail. We will realize that God really is in charge and at the centre of it all. So, we will realize that we are only mortal and God is the only constant, not us.

That is a humbling realization and I think it is that dose of perspective is what caught my attention the other day. I know I cannot think that I'm more important than anything else in this world for the very good reason that I'm not. The only perspective which works is that we can't count on people or things or Nature or Fate or whatever we find to substitute for God, but we always have to come back to the triune God. Everything else passes away. God remains.

Peace,
Phil

Nicaea and the Anglican Communion

Things weren't looking good for Nicene Christians in the 360s and 370s. Everything had come together so well only forty years before. The Emperor Constantine had legalized Christianity, encouraged its growth and had even convened the Council of Nicaea to settle the outstanding disputes in the Church, especially Arianism. Out of that council came the Nicene Creed which was supposed to settle the vexed question of Jesus' nature once and for all.

It didn't turn out that way. First, Constantine began to backpedal to keep Eastern bishops, who thought the Creed unscriptural and theologically unsound, happy. Then, his son, Constantius II began to try to impose a new creed on the Church and began to exile Nicene leaders. Worse still, the Nicene movement was splintering; the West, dominated by Nicene Christians, quarrelling with Eastern Nicene leaders over who the proper Nicene leader in Antioch was, Meletius or Paulinus. Amid all this, relentless imperial pressure from the Eastern Emperor, Valens, especially, was grinding the Nicene supporters.

From this unpromising situation, three friends ( St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa) from the remote province of Cappadocia emerged to give the Nicene movement a new boost. These Neo-Nicenes supported the Nicene view that Jesus Christ was consubstantial with God the Father, but equally firmly supported the view that the three persons of the Trinity were also separate persons which was at the centre of their moderate opponents' concerns about the Nicene Creed. Ultimately, they managed to win enough support that, at the Council of Constantinople, their Neo-Nicene view carried the day and the Nicene Creed was reiterated as the official creed of the Church.

So, I'm sure you're asking that this history lesson is all very interesting, but what is my point? What I find interesting about these events is how the Nicene orthodoxy emerged. A lot of people merely assume that the Nicene Creed was accepted without difficulty or challenge right at the Council of Nicaea. Not so. It took almost sixty years of ecclesiastical conflict to establish that creed as authoritative. Indeed, for much of this time, it looked like the supporters of Nicene orthodoxy might well lose. Indeed, it wasn't until moderates (the Cappadocian fathers) emerged who would firmly defend the authority of the Nicene creed, but would interpret it in a way that was widely acceptable to even their moderate opponents, that the Nicene orthodoxy became well-established. The brilliance of the Cappadocian solution was that it navigated between the extremes of Arianism and modalism to emerge at the head of a new coalition which would affirm what would become the orthodox Christology. Orthodoxy, as the Cappodocian Fathers well knew, is rarely found in the extremes, but rather navigates between the extremes of theological thought.

It is this recognition which set me to thinking about the current controversies in the Anglican Communion. In the past few years, the theological realm of the Anglican Communion has become very polarized. You can tell that both in the interactions of Church leaders and in Anglican blogosphere where extreme liberals and extreme conservatives only agree on one thing: they are sick and tired of each other and they see no other option but to separate. Conservatives are splintering on the issue of when or if to leave. Ecclesially, it seems like the 360s and 370s all over again.

Still, just as in the 360s and 370s, there are signs of hope. For one, there is the Windsor Report which, for all of its flaws, has attempted to give an even-handed attempt to map out the conditions needed to work out the current chaos. There is the Covenant ideas of the Archbishop of Canterbury who, even if the devil in the details, is trying to find a way to ease the tensions. Furthermore, there are the voices of Windsor conservatives, Bishop Tom Wright, the Anglican Communion Institute, who, while retaining a vigorous defence of the traditional views on homosexuality, are refusing to leave without making their case and listening to liberals do the same. All of these give me hope that we can find our way through this crisis with a renewed sense of our mission and our faith.

Of course, there are profound differences between the struggles today over homosexuality today and Christology then. For one thing, the latter struggle was more fundamental. For another, a change of emperors opened the opportunity to consolidate the Nicene position at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. Yet, that earlier crisis has taught us that extremes don't work in theology and that a real solution must navigate between not one heresy, but two. May God be with us as we navigate between the Scylla of permissiveness and the Charybdis of judgementalism.

Peace,
Phil

What does Hollywood have to do with Jerusalem?

In the last couple weeks, I've been reading some of Tertullian's moral treatises on the bus to and from my Honours Specialist course for Latin. He's been a bracing companion on this bus ride just as I'm sure he was a bracing conversation partner at the time (that would be an understatement!). What I like about him is that, while he is thoughtful and forceful, he really doesn't get into abstractions, but, rather, grounds his thought on what impact does our faith has on our Christian practice in the world. He is, of course, a rigourist and sometimes goes off the rails (especially towards the end of his career), but all too often he asks precisely the right questions.

One of his strengths is confronting the culture. Most of us, insofar as we know about him, know his comment "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem" (I think that is in the De praesciptione haereticorum). That question, I think, is one that we need to keep asking ourself because, at the end of the day, we have to challenge the culture around us and recognize that, however comfortable we are in our secular culture, we are called to a faith and practice which is, more frequently than we might like, at odds with people around us. That means we should be asking questions about what practices and customs we see around us and whether they are consistent with what Christ has taught us.

Take, for instance, his De spectaculis. In this treatise, Tertullian takes a look at the great mass spectacles of his day: theatre, chariot racing, and gladiatorial combats. What Tertullian was reacting to was Christians who believed that they can attend these spectacles without being tainted by the pagan rituals or immoral behavior which one found in these events. Tertullian, predictably, unloads on them. All of these spectacles, he argues, are saturated with idolotry which we Christians are called to flee. All of these spectacles are characterized by immorality that we should not witness, much less participate in. There isn't much give in Tertullian and, here, he is at his rigourous best. It sounds like he was right, but that was then and this is now. What do gladiatorial combats have to do with us now?

I remember asking myself that when I first read the De spectaculis in a graduate course I took on gladiators in the late nineties. While I concede the idolotry implicit in ancient spectacles is no longer, I wonder, to what degree, we are facing a more subtle idolotry: the idolotry of money which drives today's entertainment industry to such a degree that moral considerations are no longer worth talking about. I find Tertullian is asking the questions I think we all need to ask about entertainment today. What does the 'virtual' violence we experience in TV, movies and video games doing to our call to be peace-makers and to turn the other cheek? Is the sexual innuendo and content on TV something that we as Christians should consider harmless, swept by the tide of permissiveness in our society? Where do our Christian beliefs come in when we choose our entertainment options?

Tertullian, at the end of the day, was a rigourist and his solutions tended towards a nearly complete separation from the secular culture of his day. I'm not sure we need to go so far, but I do think we need a little bit of his discernment and challenging attitude to the culture we find around us. What does Hollywood have to do with Jerusalem? What does the secular university have to do with the Church? What does New Age have to do with Christians? The answers to these questions are not rarely simple, but I believe that, as Christians, we need to pose them with the same force and conviction that Tertullian showed so many centuries ago.

Peace,
Phil

Fleming Rutledge, War and the Church

I was browsing around some of the blogs that I regularly watch this morning and found Fleming Rutledge's most recent blog entry: Idolatry is alive and threatening the church. Have I mentioned how much I admire the Rev. Fleming Rutledge? She is articulate, thoughtful and puts the lie to the assumption that the only alternatives we have for the Anglican Communion are in the extremes. She is a conservative with a strong social conscience and I like that very much.

Her blog entry deals with the dangers of nationalism in the church. The particular subject of her reflection is a service at an unnamed Protestant church which had plenty of flags, soldiers and patriotism, but virtually no recognition of Christ or the mission of the Church in a recent service she attended. She, rightly in my view, condemns this kind of approach because it introduces idolatry into the church by making love of one's nation more important than worshipping God, which is rather the point of the church.

Nor is this phenomenon isolated only to the US. I know my former parish, on Remembrance Day, was rather heavy on the flags and military pomp, even though our rector usually wrote rather subversive sermons which stood the test of remembering our war dead without lapsing into an idolatrous nationalism. Yet, even up here in Canada, the idolatry of the nation sometimes rears its ugly head and it is an idolatry we can and should challenge. I think here Rev. Rutledge does that very well.

It isn't that love of country is necessarily wrong, it isn't. Rather it is a plea not to make this love an idol because, like all good things, people can and do raise patriotism into an idol which obscures the real object of our worship: Jesus Christ. As a Christian, Christ must come first, but I do wonder with services of this kind whether the planners remember that.

I take this as something of a challenge because, somehow, I have wound up being the keeper of the archives on the WWII war dead from my school (a long ironic story). This means that I will have a role in preparing the Remembrance Day ceremony at my school. That's fine in that I have no problem mourning the war dead or remembering that they sacrificed themselves for the freedom of our nation. Besides, I also know that these ceremonies tend to avoid overt nationalism and exulting in military glory, so my pacifist sensibilities are unlikely to be offended. That, in itself, is an irony. Why is it that a secular school can manage to differentiate remembrance and nationalism and we Christians have had a history of blurring that line continuously when the Bible itself warns us about the idolatry of the powers and principalities of the world?

Peace,
Phil

Settling Dust

I've been holding off for several weeks from writing any comments about the events in Anglican World during and since General Convention. I've held off because, as I noted in an earlier post, there was really too much dust in the air from the various combatants going at each other to figure out just what has happened and what it all is going to mean. I'm not entirely sure that the dust has lifted (certainly not in Anglican blogosphere, where the sandstorm doesn't look like it is going to abate before the Second Coming), but I can now see a few metres ahead of me, so I thought it useful to think about what I've managed to see.

First, ECUSA (is it still ECUSA???? Or is it officially TEC??) has elected the first female primate, Rt. Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schorri. I admit that I had to smile at Archbishop Williams' reaction which was, in effect, 'oh, my aching head' because he knew what was coming. That, in itself, wasn't any reason not to go ahead with a female primate. In the last elections for a primate in Canada, the leading candidate (Bishop Victoria Matthews) was a woman, but she had to drop out because of health reasons. Yet, I do think there are reasons to worry about this new Presiding Bishop. It isn't that she's a woman or even that she made the now infamous 'Jesus, Mother of God' comment (strictly speaking, that image has been in the mediaeval mystic tradition, although Bishop Schorri had to have known that it was going to annoy the conservatives). It is, rather her lack of commitment to the Windsor process which worries me. The fact that she continues to argue the effective separation of ECUSA from the Communion because of its polity and the fact that she permitted two same-sex marriages in her diocese (yes, I know. Only two. But, remember that Windsor didn't ask for a reduction in the number of these blessings, but rather a moratorium). On the positive side, she seems not to have pushed orthodox parishes very hard and she hasn't closed the door to discussions. We'll have to see how she grows in the job, but the opening signs aren't encouraging.

Second, ECUSA had real difficulties with figuring out to what degree it could be compliant with the Windsor Report, so, as a result, they managed not much. Let me say that I appreciate what was done, but, really, ECUSA still isn't in line with the Windsor Report's recommendations. Nor does it look like it is interested in doing so. This has serious implications for the future of the Anglican Communion and for the orthodox who remain in ECUSA.

Third, the implosion of ECUSA, which has been clear since General Convention 2003, seems to have picked up pace. The biggest reason is that the much vaunted Anglican Middle simply failed to make its presence felt. The result wasn't a one-sided convention, but rather gridlock. The fact that any answer to Windsor was formulated strikes me something of a miracle, even if that answer was half-hearted. Indeed, that answer was, in some parts of it, only achieved through procedural manouvers, not by consensus. On this issue, at least, ECUSA is so deeply disfunctional that it is hard to feel optimistic about the future. As Fleming Rutledge pointed out on a recent post on her blog, how can one expect reconciliation when one side so dominates the scene and ignores/mocks the opposition. How indeed.

Fourth, the result of General Convention has led Archbishop Williams to issue his strongest statement about the current situation regarding ECUSA and the rest of the Communion. I applaud his irenicism and his firmness in noting that ECUSA hasn't really satisfied the Windsor process and his defence of the conservative minority of ECUSA (that, they are inspired by legitimate concerns, not irrational fear). What hope I have for the Communion is the efforts to get a Covenant process started will succeed because, if nothing else, we'll have some idea of what is and is not acceptable degrees of autonomy in provinces. I know this is hardly music to liberals' ears, but, frankly, as a Communion, we need to decide what we stand for and why we are staying together. Historic ties to the Church of England the archdiocese of Canterbury are simply too flimsy ground to base a Communion. If we don't make this definition, we'll just relive these battles on new issues which just would be tedious and distract us even further from our real mission: preaching and incarnating the Gospel

Fifth (and last), we have also been watching the positioning of Nigeria as the leader of conservative separatist elements inside the Communion. This started before General Convention 2006, but has accelerated since. I do not, however, share the almost hysterical attitude to Archbishop Akinola, who has become, in the eyes of many liberals, the epitome of the power-hungry cleric, exploiting the present crisis to create a ecclesiastical fiefdom of his own. Yet, I'm also not a fan either. His ordination of a Nigerian bishop in America is less than helpful and is in breach of the Windsor process. I deplore that, even if concede that the motive of protecting a marginalized conservative Episcopal wing helps explain it and, possibly, to mitigate the offense. Set next to the gaping wounds created by ECUSA and Anglican Church of Canada, this is a lesser wound, but it is bad enough. Triage procedures dictates that we should deal with the more serious wounds first, but it doesn't mean that we can forget these either.

This is where my thinking has brought me so far. I haven't lost hope that, as a Communion, we'll navigate through this mess mostly intact, but it is going to take us a long time to do it. Meanwhile, I'll just go back to staring through the sandstorm to figure out what precisely is going on out there. I'm not sure that dust is settling any time soon.

Peace,
Phil

PhDiva- Jewish mosaics

I just ran into this interesting blog entry from PhDiva on Jewish mosaics of the Late Roman period. These findings are part of the growing interest in Judaism in the Roman Empire, especially after the great revolts of the first and second centuries AD. I really think that awareness of what is happening in Judaism in this period is an important element of understanding the religious landscape of the Roman Empire which Christianity shared. Besides, given Judaism and Christianity's close relationship,these findings have a direct bearing on Christian history.

Peace,
Phil

Reviving Latin

Thanks for this blog reference to Mike Aquilina's The Way of the Fathers.

MercatorNet charts the demise and revival of Latin. This is all the more well-timed because I'm in the middle of taking an Honour Specialist Course in Latin/Classical Studies as we speak. Everyday for the last week or so, I meet with 16 other Latin teachers; some who have next to no experience, others who have decades. I'm learning fast to improve my own teaching and enjoying the process.

As a Christian, it is still a mystery to me why we're not encouraging knowledge of Greek and Latin. Now, I recognize we're fighting the same cultural factors which have been eating away at language learning in North America (at least). North Americans are really language-phobes and that makes the prospect of learning a language seem impossibly hard. Yet, how can we forget that the New Testament is in Greek or that the Fathers write in Latin And Greek. Translations are well and good, but sometimes it is helpful to get back ad fontes in the original. Yet, seminary after seminary dumps Greek and Latin. And, then, we wonder why we wind up with crazy biblical interpretations and what not.

This linguistic blindness is, at least, a great a piece of of our tendency to forgetfulness as a society and as Christians. So, I welcome that revival of language learning, both in the secular school system and among Christians. God willing, it will continue.

Peace,
Phil

The Shape of Christian History

One of the things that I've been thinking about for a while is the whole topic of just what is Christian history. In a sense, I've been wondering about this since entering grad school and becoming a Christian (which coincided, oddly enough). Part of this wondering is the odd disjuncture faced by all Christians in modern academe. It isn't that academic institutions like universities or schools are anti-Christian; rather most academics regard Christian faith as inherently irrelevant. This is all part of the Enlightenment inheritance which sought to separate religion into a private sphere and reserve the public sphere for matters of universal concern. So, in history (my own area of interest), what this produces is a great concern for causation, chronology and the reinforcement of universal humanistic values such as the loyalty to the nation state, human rights and such like. It isn't that these values are wrong or bad, but, to a Christian historian, they are incomplete.

Still, I really don't know how to write Christian history. There is no doubt that one of the characteristics of it is that we have to presume God as historical actor. That is easy enough when we're dealing with periods covered by the Bible because here we have a book which not only presumes God's intervention in time, but it even records it. Academic historians have problems with this, of course, but that is only to be expected. God's interventions are, by definition, one offs and academic history thinks in terms of patterns. God's actions are a part of a pattern, but it is one that is simply too big to trace. So, God seems random, even when we can see His actions.

Yet, what strikes me as the hardest area to wrap my head around is dealing with what faith tells us about the shape of Christian history. We are, if we think about it, a people who is in the middle of its story. That is, we presume a history which has a beginning, a middle and and an end. The beginning presents its problems in details, but all Christian historians begin with Creation, even if they may find it hard to define exactly what happened because of the lack of human witnesses. God was there, of course, and, for the Christian, that is enough to know that God created the world at least.

The middle, of course, is the easy bit. Much of that is what, we would claim, all historians study. It is the stuff of history. We may have lost information. Some periods may be next to unattested, but, theoretically, we could know something because this is humans acting upon each other. Now, we Christians assume that God's redemptive work is also operating behind the scenes, but it only peaks out every once in a while. The supreme example is Jesus' incarnation which is the pivot point in human history. It is the point at which we shifted from the beginning to the ending of history. It is so important that even secular historians use it as the implicit pivot point, even if their explanation is that, rightly or wrongly, the rise of the Christian movement is so important for later history that it is a pivotal point. We will get increduous reactions when we insist on God as a historical actor, but, at least, the events of the past are taken as known or, at least, subject to proof.

Yet, we also presume an end. More than that, (since many histories presume an end to history: witness the predictions of nuclear suicide in the Cold War or environmental disaster today), we think we know how it will happen. We presume that, someday, God's redemptive work will be completed and human history as we know it will end. Death will be conquered and evil destroyed. Some Christians go so far as arguing that the Book of Revelation literally tells us how things will end. Others take it as an indication that they will end and, while the dying throes won't be pretty, the end will be wondrous. We are, as N.T. Wright suggests, in Act Four of a five act play, but we have an idea from the hints thus far how thing will end, but they haven't happened yet. Among the things that we see darkly is the future consummation for God's purpose, but we just don't know the details yet.

It is this last part which drives our secular colleagues crazy. They rightly point out that it is difficult for historians to study something that hasn't already happened yet. Yet, because of our faith, we can't stop remembering that all that we see is leading in that direction. Yet, we also have to remember that we aren't called to write a future history, if that isn't an oxymoron. Nor are we called to create a Rapture Index . We are called to try to figure out what people have done and where God is in the periods we talk about. I'm just not sure how to strike that balance.

Peace,
Phil

St. Thomas' Day

Happy St. Thomas' Day!

It is the feast day for St. Thomas the Apostle today which got me thinking. St. Thomas is a popular saint these days. Not only do we have the (false) Gospels of Thomas, but we have a long tradition of preachers and lay people to whom the story of St. Thomas is both appealing and comforting. He is, if you like, the patron saint of doubting and seeking, as well as that of architects and blindness.

Now, I grant you that this role of St. Thomas is appropriate in many ways. Certainly, two out of the three times in the Gospel of John (John, 14,5 and John, 20,24-29)in which Thomas plays a part, Thomas is probing at Jesus (in the second case, quite literally) because Jesus is promising some pretty incredible things. In the first instance, Jesus is promising to prepare a place with God in Heaven which is, after all, quite a promise to make. In the second instance, He is alleged to have been resurrected which, to sympathize with poor Thomas, is rather a big claim. Sure, it had been promised, but no one had actually done it yet.

You can really sympathize with the poor guy. What is more, by his very empirical mind, by his persistent questioning, he seems to mimic a very modern show-me, prove-it-to-me mindset. Yet, we would do ourselves a dis-service if we stopped reading at Thomas' doubtful speech. Jesus doesn't leave Thomas in doubt. Sure, He lets Thomas test Him, but He also makes it clear that faith is always preferable to doubt. He tells Thomas not to doubt, but believe, but, more importantly, He commends those who have not seen and yet believed; not those who juggle the balls of doubt and skepticism in the most elegant manner possible. This encounter is one which is designed to enhance faith, not leave us in doubt as happens too often when we stop at Thomas' doubts.

I am a convert and I really do get the need the question and to doubt, especially as we feel our way to faith. I did (and still do, to some degree) my fair share of that questioning. Yet, I think it is all too easy to get hung up on our intellectual doubts and reasonings and not remember that faith is merely the trust that what God has told us will happen, even if it doesn't look like it will. Really, it is the faith which Thomas discovered that day and it is that faith which sent him out, according to tradition, to India to found a church thousands of miles from his Judaean home. That faith is what inspires me and which makes St. Thomas so compelling a saint for me.

Peace,
Phil

Generous Orthodoxy- Random Thoughts

I wanted to post a link to what is, in my view, on the best things I've read on General Convention so far. It is an entry on Rev. Fleming Rutledge's blog, Generous Orthodoxy which I think manages to take a balanced view of GC 2006. Whether you agree with her or not, I think she makes some excellent points.

I have to admit that I still am nowhere near ready to comment on GC 2006, mostly because the vitriol and bitterness of the debate has made me distinctly unwilling to get involved in it, even in this small corner of cyberspace. It is going to take weeks to figure out what has happened, so I'm just going to keep my trap shut until the dust settles. And, even then, I really don't know what there will be to say.


Peace,
Phil

Why Patristics?

I wanted to pick up a comment I made in the previous blog entry in which I mention that Mike Aquillina's Way of the Fathers encourages me to make similar experiments in what has been called patristiblogging. Perhaps it may be all the Latin and Classical Civilization exams I've been marking, perhaps this is tapping into a long-term plan, I thought I might start off my experiments with a few comments about why anybody would want to do anything so odd as reading the Fathers in this day and age.

If you sense a little defensiveness in the my tone, I suspect it is because we are living at a time when the Fathers are distinctly out of vogue. That shouldn't be entirely surprising at a time when the Bible itself is facing unprecedented (well, at least, since the early patristic era) challenges to its authority, not only in an increasingly secular society, but even among Christians. Aren't we, the critics say, talking about those old, white males who have oppressed everyone so long? Why, then, bother?

Why, indeed. Perhaps it's just my own interest in the arcane and underappreciated. Perhaps it is my mis-spent youth as a graduate student in Classics which give me an affection to the Fathers and the ability to read them in the original (even if I get few chances to do it). Perhaps it is because, as my wife likes to say to new acquaintances, I'm one of the few people who can say that they converted (at least, partially) because of reading Augustine (that is a slight exaggeration, but I was taking a beginners, intensive Augustine course when I became a Christian). I'm sure all of these personal reasons have a place in figuring out why I'm interested in patristics, but, somehow, I'm not sure they're enough to convince others why it is important to read the writings of these ancient Christians.

So, what then? How do I justify reading patristics? Well, it depends on who I'm talking to, but I usually make three points.

First, the Fathers are, usually, fairly good theologians in their own right. I think we as moderns forget this because we are put off by expressions of Christianity which are very different from their own. The Fathers carry with them rather different cultural baggage and deal with very different issues than we do today, so it is easy to dismiss them as primitive and underdeveloped in comparison to our own more enlightened understanding of faith and theology. Yet, the Fathers had to work out how to view the canon, how to understand the Trinity and other similar foundational issues. I submit that that needed at least as much, if not more, theological acumen than many theologians today have. As a result, despite their almost foreign sounding expressions, the Fathers really do bear listening to, if only because they were not theological slouches.

Second, the Fathers are a link to the apostolic teaching which we all claim to honour as Christians. In fact, they are rather closer to the apostles, who were, after all, the eye-witnesses of our Lord's life and death than we are. One of the passages in Irenaeius of Lyons which I enjoy is when he comments that he had met a very old Polycarp of Smyrna, who had met and been taught directly by the apostles and, especially, John. The idea that we have writers who are only one or two removes from the eye-witnesses to our Lord's life, makes me sit up and take notice. Perhaps they know something we don't know about our faith. All too often we moderns (and, even more so, post-moderns) are engaged in a deliberate project to forget our Christian past. I think that is deeply wrong-headed because we miss so much when we forget that our theology has not emerged sui generis.

Third, since the Fathers are so foundational in the formation of our theology, we really do need to read them in order to figure out why they came to the conclusions they did. It isn't that the Fathers are infallible, but we owe it ourselves to read them first hand to figure that out. All to many people leave it to others to tell them what the Fathers say and there is a lot of misinformation out there (witness, The Da Vinci Code). If we really expect to do decent theology, we need to understand what they said and why.

Would this convince everyone? Probably not. My hope is that someone out there will take pause and wonder if they shouldn't learn more about the Fathers. I think that part of the anemia which has afflicted orthodoxy in its various forms (this is a rather broad concept of orthodoxy, I concede) is because even orthodox Christians aren't familiar enough with their tradition to make it make sense to their fellow Christians in the pew. If I can contribute even a little to making the Fathers make more sense, I will be content.

Peace,
Phil

Adventures in Blogosphere

This has been a very busy week. For myself, it has been the crazy season of setting exams, marking last minute assignments and marking summative assignments (exams are next week). In the Anglican Communion, the drama of the General Convention 2006 has been unfolding before our eyes in the U.S. As a friend as noted, GC is still in the silly season, (see Essays by Jim), but the Anglican corner of blogosphere has been chattering in a particularly crazy way, mulling over rumours, plots, self-congratulation and, very occasionally, hard news from this contentious and, likely, historic General Convention of ECUSA. Sifting through all that activity would be a full-time occupation, if one would have the time and the inclination.

This week, I've had neither. I'm content to look into the dust cloud from time to time, just to see if the dust looks like it is settling. It isn't, so I'm not really interested in contributing, even modestly, to the confusion.

Instead, I found myself thinking about what else is happening out there in blogosphere, away from Anglican-land. What I found in the approximately twenty seconds that I had to myself this week were three commendable blogs which I wanted to share with my readers and which are giving me ideas about where I want to go with this blog.

First, there is Fathers of the Church . I stumbled on this blog I know not how, but I'm ecstatic that I did. The writer on the blog, Mike Aquilina, is a (published!) Roman Catholic writer on patristics from the US. What is great about him is that he writes with evident love of patristics and with a readable writing style which makes the Fathers accessible even to those who may not have specialized in them. He has a particular talent in making the Fathers relevant which is a challenge in this very history mistrusting age. That attracts me and encourages me towards experiments in this area.

Second, there is Bibliocalia which also originates out of the States (California) and also deals with patristics and biblical literature. Here is a fellow who is trying to maintain his studies in patristics in 'real' life and uses this blog as a conduit to that. I sympathize with that because that is precisely what I'm trying to do. I'm still trying to work out what that is supposed to look like, but this site bears watching for its blend of faith and learning.

Third, what is arguably the mother-lode for theologians of all types (even amateurs like myself), Faith and Theology . Here we see discussion about theology and some extremely smart theologians talking in an accessible style. I enjoy the idea of the Theological World Cup (okay, that is an outside site, but this is where I heard about it) and the For the Love of God series (where contributors offer reflections on their favourite theologians) and have been working my way through this exciting well-established blog.

What these discoveries have helped me to realize is that I'm really not interested in staying in Anglican blogosphere. My real interest doesn't lie in Anglican ecclesial politics (not that I'm swearing off this topic, but really it isn't my focus), but rather in seeing the theological rubber hitting the ground and learning how to make my own theological ruminations hit the ground as well. In that sense, these blogs are excellent guides of how to do this with grace. If I could do as well....

Peace,
Phil

Being Anglican

The last few shots across the bow have or are being fired in blogosphere as ECUSA approaches its General Convention; the first since the contentious and controversial GC 2003 which has helped to trigger a major crisis in the Anglican Communion. Along with, I'm sure, every other Anglican blogger, I wanted to make my own comments before all sorts of things hit the fan.

I should note that I write not as a member of ECUSA or even as particularly knowledgeable about internal ECUSA politics, short of knowing about the issues and some of the personalities involved. Yet, I am an interested observer because my own province, the Anglican Church of Canada is about a year away from its own General Synod which likely is going to be contentious as well and for much the same reasons. The situation up here in Canada (excepting, of course, New Westminster) has been calmer and less divisive. I think the reason for that is that there is a perception that the no irrevocable decision has been undertaken. The furthest General Synod did, after agreeing to study the problem for a few more years, was to affirm the integrity and sanctity of same-sex unions. That was far enough, thank you very much, but it did stop short of open defiance of Lambeth 98 etc, etc.

Yet, what is fascinating about this last series of articles is how much liberal articles have been drawing a line in the sand and claiming that what is at issue is our very identity as Anglicans. Now, this argument plays out in various ways, but the dominant way has been to argue that the changes to the Communion suggested by Windsor Report and by the recent Covenant proposal will change our Anglican identity. I understand the argument and I concede that these commentators are right. Constitutionally, these documents are asking for substantial change. Yet, I must confess to finding these constitutional arguments a bit tedious because, at the end of the day, I don't think they are central to our identity as Anglicans at all.

So, what, if not constitutions, is the core of our communal identity? I think we can start approaching by recognizing that Anglican is really not a noun, but actually an adjective. When we are using the word Anglican, we are really talking about the Anglican (Communion), the Anglican (Church) and Anglican (Christians). Being Anglican is not the central part of our identity. At least, it shouldn't be. We are a church who worships using a rite derived from the Church of England as it emerged out of the Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries. We are Christians who worship and theologize out of this tradition which we believe is linked to the apostolic traditions in an unbroken line (yes, Roman Catholics beg to differ, but this is our claim, not theirs).

So, what does that mean? It means that the last court of approval is not the constitutions of our individual churches, or even any Covenant which might emerge out of the Windsor Report process. The last court of appeal is how we've learned to be the Church, first from Scripture and from a long history of being the Church (the good, the bad and the ugly) in the world. This is one reason why I like the Windsor Report is that it referred the issue of our division to precisely the right area; the ecclesiological instead of the constitutional. It helps, I suppose, that I happen to think the ecclesiology of the Windsor Report is bang on and consistent with what the Bible tells us about how we are to be the Church.

I'm not saying that constitutions and covenants are unimportant. I am saying that they are only secondary to ecclesiological considerations because they flow from them. Now, I'm sure that some readers may think I'm quibbling here, but I do think the distinction is important because it settles down to how do we work out this argument. As you might expect, I don't think it helpful to merely play dueling constitutions or to argue that each individual province is functionally independent and can proceed on its way regardless of what other provinces think. I'm very unclear how we could say that is a body of anything, much less of Christ.

We are bound by ties of affection and support, as the New Testament makes clear, which means we have responsibilities to each other to maintain the communication lines and to do nothing that will cause the others to stumble. We have forgotten that and the place to remind us are Paul's Letters or Jesus commission of the disciples in the Gospels. Scripture is our foundation, and, then, only secondarily, constitutions, prayer books and the like. So, Scripture is precisely where we all, liberals and conservatives, need to start from. We are, ultimately, Christians before we are Anglicans, so we need to go back to the basic level to work out how this Anglican Communion is supposed to work.

I will continue to pray for ECUSA as it enters General Convention that wisdom and the Spirit will prevail in its deliberations. Amen.

Pentecost Learning

Happy Pentecost!!

I've always liked Pentecost. Part of that liking is that this is when I was baptized as an Anglican which represented a culmination of a busy year of conversion about fourteen years ago. That conversion really was a turning point in my life and having my baptism happen on Pentecost made a lot of sense then and now. The rushing of the Spirit among the disciples always seemed to have been enacted in my life with the changes which my life took in that year of conversion and which continued to this day. I'm grateful for those changes because I recognize that I had been on a very different, much more self-destructive course before that. Each Pentecost is a reminder of God's intervention in my life, just as it should remind us of the Spirit's intervention into human history through the lives of the disciples.

This Pentecost has also been interesting because of where we're living. Last fall, we moved into a very Jewish area in Toronto, so we've been spectators to the rhythms of Jewish life in the city. We've been lucky enough to be very good friends with a modern Orthodox couple and have had the opportunity to explore the links between Judaism and Christianity in a unique. In particular, my wife has been off to shul a few times including this week as the Jewish community has been celebrating Shavuot (Pentecost)which is the fiftieth day from Passover. The holiday is celebrated with all night Torah learning and, as with any other Jewish holiday, food. My wife managed to make it out to a few of these events (in full frum gear: long skirt, long sleeve shirt and hat). She enjoyed the events and learned quite a bit.

One of the events had focused on learning Torah and why it was important to study it for God's sake, not for the purpose of grinding theological axes, but to learn more about God himself. My wife's description of the event made me wonder how it was that we Christian lost that sense of learning about our faith, about Scripture and about God. Why do we use the Bible as a mine for pithy quotations to use against our enemies, but not really study it? Why do we study theology only for creating sharp weapons to use against those who we perceive as our enemies? Why do we figure that, unlike every other area in our lives, we don't have to know anything about our faith, about our Scripture?

Of course, I'm not the only person to have noticed this. Bishop Tom Wright makes similar comments in his Hebrews for Everyone, when he notes, with some perplexity, that people who in other areas pride themselves on their knowledge almost boast of their lack of knowledge about theology, church history and scripture. Somehow, we Anglicans seem to think that this is okay. Doesn't this fly in the face of the oft-repeated slogan of the Anglican church allowing people to worship with 'heart, mind and soul' if we refuse to learn about our faith, not just through experience, but also through learning about what God is like through Scripture and theology or learning about what has worked in the faith over the centuries of church history?

I don't have any answer for that, of course, but I wonder if we shouldn't take lessons from the Jews here in their transparent love of learning Torah. I wonder what would happen if we imitate the example of, say, Lauren Winner in Girl Meets God, who, on Pentecost night, stayed up with friends to study Scripture all night? Or, if that is too ambitious, if we took a little time out each day to read Scripture, read theology or about the great examples of faith in the past?

I'm not saying that this will solve all our problems as people or as a church. Clearly, study will not, by itself, bring us closer to God. We have to experience God in our lives, through others and through prayer, but I put it to you: if you love someone, don't you want to get to know them better? And wouldn't you use whatever methods were at hand to do that?

On this Pentecost eve, I commit myself anew to Christian learning for its own sake. I pray that, through this study, I learn more about the God I love. May that rushing Spirit of Pentecost sweep us up further into God's presence and may we seek to learn more about our divine Lover.

Peace
Phil

Covenants and the Anglican Communion

It has been just over week since the Proposal for Anglican Covenant has come out, just enough time for the initial blast of publicity and visceral reactions to ease down and, perhaps, just time to start to think about the implications of this move. What I offer here is hardly a systematic review of the document (which can be found at Covenant Proposal ), but rather a series of impressions based on my reading of the proposal and the reaction to it.

First, I think this is a good idea. One of the most frustrating aspects of the last few years is the almost total lack of accountability in how provinces act towards each other. I am the first to recognize the effective independence of each province of the Anglican Communion and to recognize that this means that there is considerable scope for different practices from province to province. These differences are a good thing, but we also have to remember that, as a Communion, we are also affected by other provinces' decisions. A covenant to recognize that interdependence and to work out ways to appropriately deal with problems between provinces is long overdue.

Second, this idea of a covenant which binds us as a Communion is a biblical one. Indeed, implicit in the ecclesiology of the Bible, is an assumption that the churches of St. Paul's day, while effectively independent in most areas, are bound by the good news they share and by the bonds of affection with which they are bound. The generous assistance of the Macedonian churches to Jerusalem is only on example of these ties. If we are looking for a model to retain independence and the sense of belonging to each other, we would do worse than the Pauline churches or even the churches of the sub-Apostolic age. We don't need an imperial bishop to accomplish this, but we do need forbearance and wisdom among ourselves.

Third, I recognize that this covenant is viewed by both sides with considerable suspicion and, to some degree, rightly. There has been so bad blood between the two sides in this conflict that it should be unsurprising that both sides cannot trust each other not to manipulate the mechanisms set up by this covenant to drive the other out. Yet, this covenant has been implicit in the logic of the Windsor Report and really is a measure to cool the conflict. I pray that we can bear that in mind.

Lastly, I recognize a certain amount of fatigue around this issue. Over the last year, we have been increasingly seeing both moderate liberals and moderate conservatives muttering about wanting this issue to just go away. Rightly, moderates point out that there are other serious issues in the Communion and it is time to get on with things. Yet, I do want to caution that, now that this issue has been exposed to the light, we can't sweep it under the rug. I certainly wish the New Westminster crisis and the Robinson ordination crisis never happened, but they have and we need to deal with those issues. Before we can even get going, we need to figure out what are our common bonds and how do we deal with provinces which disregard those bonds. I get that ECUSA and the diocese of New Westminster believe they are at the forefront of a prophetic call to open the church to homosexuals (I dispute that, but that is the subject of another blog), but we have to recognize that the prophets tend to cause as much conflict as they solve. If this is true prophecy, we will look back on this time and say that the divisions created needed to happen. If it was not, then both New Westminster and ECUSA have to answer for that. The jury is out on the prophetic call, but we had better figure out how to discern these calls or we're just asking for further division and conflict.

Peace,
Phil

N.T. Wright, Creation and the Church

I'm past due for a post, but life, which tends to get a little too quick for me this time of year, has been busier than usual this last couple of weeks. A combination of a student conference and a basically busy week has conspired to prevent me from blogging.

The highlight of this week, however, was getting a chance to see Bishop N.T. Wright (of Durham) speaking at a conference put on by my wife's college. Before I proceed, I have to say that I'm an N.T. Wright fan. I've read his Christian Origins series (I'm even slowly acquiring it for myself--the books are a little expensive) and several other books and articles by him. I find him one of the more thoughtful and insightful New Testament scholars and theologians in recent times. If any of you have read the much maligned (by both sides) Windsor Report, you'll find N.T. Wright's fingerprints on it throughout. His ecclesiological vision, by itself, if we bothered to listen and act, is sufficient to stabilize our fragmenting Communion and allow us a chance to settle our difficulties with each other. That is a heady vision, I know, but the trick is that many don't accept that vision for various reasons.

Bishop Wright delivered three keynote addresses last week. Unfortunately, time and money meant that I could really only catch one which dealt with Romans 8, 18-25 and the topic of the Creation. I really don't have space to transcribe my notes on this, but his argument emphasized our responsibility for Creation which has been marred by the fall and our failures to live up to our calling at God's image bearers who reflect God's glory and care into Creation itself. Thus, by the Fall, Creation has been afflicted with decay and death which continues to hold sway. The good Creation, like the Promised Land before the Exodus, is held captive by the powers of decay and death, but has been released by Jesus' victory over death; a victory in which we participate now, but for which we still await the final consummation. And we are a people who are called to live in the hope and expectation that we are only living through the labour pains of the new age to come.

None of this is particularly new, mind you. I've seen similar arguments before. Yet, I enjoyed this reminder as well as the elegant and clear exposition of it (which I don't think I've even come close to conveying). And I enjoyed Bishop Wright's elegant refutations, especially his brief excursus on the Da Vinci Code, the Judas Gospel and their popularity. His definition of Gnosticism is masterful: (rough quotation)"At the heart of Gnosticism is the belief that Creation is evil, created by a stupid God". With Bishop Wright, I set myself against that view because I do believe that Creation was and is a good thing, even if it is currently in travail.

What I found particularly appealing about this talk, and which made me wish I could see another, is that Bishop Wright spoke with hope. Hope about the world as we find it. Hope that the evil afflicting Creation and us has already been beaten and undermined. And even hope that our Communion can get through our current crises and survive to pass on these other two, more important, sources of hope to the world around us. In some ways, this last hope is the one that feels the strangest. We can all, I think, grant the first two sources of hope because they are so general and so central to our faith. Yet, this third hope is harder because it is more intimately personal to the life of our Communion and is a place where emotions are rubbed raw. Yet, Bishop Wright's call for patience at a time in which our church travails is just as grounded in our communal hope as Christians. If we can have hope for the world in the state that it is in, how can we note have hope that we can work out our quarrels, whatever they are, in our Church?

Bishop Wright is a precious voice in our Communion today. He is learned. He is clear and firm in his opinions. His call for patience should slow us down, move us from our rigidly defended beliefs so that we can start trying to sort out what God wants of us. Our only chance as a Communion is to bring down the temperature and finally talk about what God wants of us. I pray that, in this corner of cyberspace, we can manage, even a little, to do some of these things in our discussions.

Peace,
Phil

United 93 and the "Bonhoeffer Clause"

Well, there has been a certain amount of buzz around the release of United 93, the first movie to depict the events of 9/11. My wife and I went to see it on Friday. We came out reasonably impressed, almost despite ourselves. We both liked that no stars were cast, but rather unknown actors/actresses (the most we managed was 'Wait a minute, he/she looks familiar. Can't quite place them...'). Indeed, many of leading figures in the various air controls, FAA and NORAD headquarters were the actual people who were on duty that day. The style lets the action just flow and you do really get a strong feel for the chaos and 'fog of war' which beset both the civilian and military agencies struggling to work out a response to the 9/11 attacks. The frantic efforts of all parties to figure out just what was happening, how many planes were under the control of hijackers and what rules of engagement were possible in so novel a situation explains many things about the apparent paralysis in the hour and a half that it took for the attacks to unfold. That and having only four aircraft (only two of which were actually armed!!) to defend the entire Eastern seaboard. I think we sometimes forget how unexpected and how suddenly things happened that day.

The movie, of course, focuses on United flight 93, the only hijacked plane which failed to reach its target (now believed to have been the Capitol) because, according to reconstructed accounts, of the brave actions of the passengers and surviving crew. That knowledge made this movie very difficult to sit through, since the action seems to creep at a snail's pace (actually, it is closer to real time than any Hollywood thriller would get). What was interesting about that pacing is the effect it had on both my wife and I. By about half way through the movie, we were both ready to jump up and yell 'Stab somebody already!!! Get this thing started!" Ironically, as my wife pointed out later, we were very much feeling the same emotions that the hijackers themselves were feeling because we, the audience, and the hijackers were the only people who really knew what was going to happen. So, all these scenes of people eating their breakfasts, chatting with each other or just quietly reading which are so normal were simply jarringly eerie because we know where all this will end. So, we found ourselves understanding the younger hijackers who were getting really twitchy as they awaited the signal for them to seize the plane.

The other really striking element of this movie was the comparative lack of jingoistic rhetoric. When the decision was made to storm the cockpit, there was no 'America is the greatest' rhetoric, just a recognition that, in all likelihoold, everyone on that plane was already dead (since they already knew about the WTC and the Pentagon attacks, this wasn't a surprising conclusion), but all they could do was to make sure that no one else need die. To be sure, the passengers in the movie had a faint hope and planned for it (they had a small plane pilot and a retired air traffic controller), but they are shown to realize that any chance to save their own lives was slim at best. They weren't fighting to save so much their own lives as the lives of others. They were ordinary people caught in an impossible situation and responding bravely and sacrificially.

This analysis, of course, should be surprising to those of you who have been reading my posts on pacifism. Yes, I do see some need to climb down a bit in conceding that, in this extreme situation, a resort to violence was likely the best option available. In a sense, we have to invoke the "Bonhoeffer Clause", when faced by an evil beyond our ability to persuade or restrain short of violence, violence is an justifiable tactic. I note, in passing, that, if we read Bonhoeffer's diaries from prison, he continued to regard his involvement in the plot against Hitler as a sin, albeit a necessary one. In a sinful and brutal world, that is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in.

(Now, before anyone jumps up and says, 'Ah ha, this invalidates your entire argument about pacifism', my only answer is that this case is so extreme that no one can seriously take it to impugn a reluctance to use violence. It may justify just war theory, but I'd also argue that, if we actually consistently followed the historical Christian doctrine of just war we wouldn't a. be able to fight them with modern weaponry and b. we'd have a lot fewer wars! Does that make me a crypto 'just warrior'? Maybe, but, if so, I would insist on applying it far more rigorously than it is currently employed, making me functionally a pacifist)

And a last comment on an already too long post. After we finished watching the movie, we were among the last people to leave the theatre (my wife likes looking at the credits). As we were leaving, a young Muslim man approached us, wanting to chat about the movie. So, we, two observant, if pacifist Christians, and a reasonably observant Muslim compared notes. We were both struck by the opening scene in which the hijackers got ready to go to the airport as one of them prayed from the Koran. Understandable, our Muslim acquaintance found it hard to watch what he felt was the distortion of his religion, even or perhaps especially because it was at the hands of his co-religionists. My wife remarked that she has a similar reaction to media portrayals of mafiosi "devoutly" attending Mass.

We were also struck that, just before the passengers on United 93 moved to overtake their hijackers, that the film makers very clearly juxtaposed the hijackers praying in the cockpit to the passengers, almost to a one, praying the Lord's Prayer, setting up an opposition that we all felt was invidious. Where were the Jewish prayers or prayers of other faith traditions?

Yet, those were mild criticisms and we found ourselves agreeing in our sorrow and shock, even after five years, at the events of that day. We relived what we were doing that day and how it had affected us. We talked about the impact of that day on peaceful Muslims and all of us. Then, we shook hands and parted, conscious of that grace which allowed us, even if for a moment, to bridge a divide that our media and our fear tells us should be unbridgeable. And it is that grace which gives me hope that we'll find our way through the mistrust and fear that still linger between we Christians in the West and Muslims. Amen.

Peace and Jesus Redux

This is the long awaited (sic!)followup post to the Jesus and Peace post. What I'm trying to do is set out a few ideas about how the ideas in that post look like when the theological rubber hits the ground.

But, first, a caveat. When I admit to Christian pacifism (sometimes, it feels like that, what I am emphatically not saying is that evil should be endured, not resisted. That is all too commonly believed because people want to relate pacifism with passivism. That won't work on many levels. The words themselves bear no relationship between the roots of either word, short of the fact that they are both derived from Latin (pacifism from pax=peace; passivism from patior=I endure, I suffer). Nor is Christian pacifism about being led to the slaughter for the sake of suffering.

The point of Christian pacifism is that we emulate what Jesus did. He confronted the powers and principalities in his day, but refused to use violence against them. Instead, he used his cosmic judo move and let the contradictions of their own evil destroy them.

So, how does this look in real life? On the individual front, I think it means two things. First, it means being willing to confront evil wherever we see it, partly by naming sin as sin, evil as evil in our every day life. That means, being willing to stand up and be counted when we see something happening in our daily life that is wrong, even if that move is risky as far as career or whatever. That is scary and difficult. And God knows that I'm personally not perfect at this, since going along with systemic injustice is the easier root to take. That is setting aside the problem of discernment because most situations do not see a simplistic evil vs good kind of a situation. That may mean that we will have to criticize both parties in a dispute and risk the ire of both sides.

Second, it also means the rejection of violence as a means of human interaction. That means getting into a fight should not be an option, even if provoked into it. This is, of course, difficult and I'm not sure I would succeed at it either. Yet, at the very least, I would say it also means seeing violence, not as a tool of interpersonal interactions, but as a personal failure. Evading violence while maintaining one's integrity constitutes, to me, a greater victory than fighting my way through a situation.

Okay, now that might work, in a relatively peaceful country on an individual basis, but how does it work in the international scene (the last of anglifan's questions). I suspect that, in the world as we have today, quite badly. What is likely to happen to a country adopting a non-violent foreign policy is that, sooner or later, it will be overwhelmed by a more aggressive neighbour. Mind you, in this scenario, the rules are rather skewed to this answer and it shouldn't surprise anyone that sinful humanity would, in these conditions, be unable to sustain such a foreign policy. In a world where sin seems natural, none of this should surprise anyone.

Yet, I think we have to recognize two things. First, non-violent resistance has proven itself to be effective in wearing down even brutal regimes. The non-violent resistance campaigns for independence in India, against apartheid in South Africa and against the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe succeeded where violent revolution could not. Yes, these campaigns are long and often costly, but, sooner or later, evil falls apart when it realizes that its primary weapon (violence) is no longer feared.

Second, a consistent non-violent foreign policy (and here I mean economic and social violence as well as military violence)would aim to resolve grievances between nations before they burst into conflict. That may still not be enough to prevent true evil from attacking a country, but that kind of evil is not common and really need a soil of perceived oppression and hatred to grow in (thus, Hitler's rise to power happened because of the perceived evil of the Verseilles Treaty, acerbated by the Great Depression).

Okay, I think that is the broad outline of what I'm trying to argue. I hope it makes sense.

Peace,
Phil

Christ is Risen!

He is risen, indeed!

Holy Saturday

Well, we're on the edge of Easter now.

My wife and I are at home, resting before our Easter Vigil service at 8:30 p.m. I love this time of year; this Triduum triathalon of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil which culminates in Easter Sunday tomorrow. We have already ridden that wild ride from the calm, but ominous Maundy Thursday service with its stunning affirmation of our service to each other found in the liturgy of the feet washing to the stripping of the altar and our silent departure into the night. Then, we get to the sombreness of Good Friday, as we recall that the horrible death that Jesus suffered on the Cross is really the decisive moment in human history: that, in the face of apparent defeat and ruin, the power of sin and death are broken forever. Yet, by the time we leave in silence again, you wouldn't know it. Christ has died, but where is the rising? We grieve for the death, but we await his rising; the token of his victory over death.

Today is a day of waiting, a day of expectancy. Like the apostles, we haven't realized what has happened the last few days and we think all is lost. Then, we get to the Vigil. We watch that small flame in the brazier at the back of the church grow. We watch candles lit by the acolytes as the light spread through the whole church and the whole church seems to awaken from a disturbed sleep. And, finally, we reach the Gloria, when our voices, restrained by Lent and the experience of Good Friday, almost shout out "Glory to God!" amid frantic bell ringing as we try to convey our joy and astonishment that, contrary to all expectation, God's grace has won out, after all. It is a glorious and joyful moment.

So, we wait, but we wait in a different way than the apostles. We wait confidently because we know how this drama turned out so many years ago. And we know that this is how it turned out last year, last Easter Vigil. I often wonder how the apostles were able to stand it as news trickled in about the odd things that were happening around Jesus' tombs. I certainly don't know how they stood, when Jesus came into the Upper Room for the first time. All our Glorias and bell-ringing is nothing compared to that.

I'm still waiting, of course, but, before I go off and wait some more, I want to wish all of you a wonderful Easter. I pray that you experience the Risen Christ in all his wonder this Easter and into the coming year!

Peace,
Phil

Palm Sunday Bus Ride

Now, we're in the homestretch for Easter and the busyness of Holy Week beckons. I love Palm Sunday and this whole week. Palm Sunday is the first day of the dramatic week to come. I enjoyed the procession into the garden (and it was a beautiful day!), the reading of the passion narrative by the congregation and, of course, palm crosses. We start with the high point of Jesus ministry, but, in the passion narrative, we remember the dark edge to the coming week. Easter may be coming, but Good Friday is first.

This Palm Sunday, so far, is a little different. My wife and I usually drive to our church because it is a bit of a distance from our apartment. This year, however, our car is in the shop, so we took transit. No big deal, of course, but it did remind us that Palm Sunday is one of the more visible Christian holidays. While we were returning from church, we kept running into people carrying palm crosses sheepishly smiling because we know what service they were just at. Sometimes little conversations start up as we wish each other a Happy Easter (yes, early, but the thought is there).

Sometimes, our palm crosses open up the chance for seeing God's grace peaking into the world. On our way back, we had a conversation with an El Salvadorian woman, who frequently went out to Latin American countries on mission trips. She told us about those trips and about helping the poor people she encountered, reminded us how lucky we are here in Canada and told us about her children, who are flourishing and faithful here. I suspect it was our palm crosses which put her at ease enough to tell us about her life. When we got off the bus, we wished each other a Happy Easter to come. Then, my wife observed that there are all these little saints all over the place. Palm Sunday is just one of those holidays which brings them out.

Happy Palm Sunday!

Peace,
Phil

Peace and Jesus

I owe this post (and likely the next few) to anglifan, who asked me in the Iraq and Peace thread what I meant by my comment that I was writing in the tradition of Stanley Hauerwas and the Mennonites. So, I will attempt to explain what I mean by this, although I caution I am relying heavily on my understanding (such as it is) of Hauerwas's The Peaceable Kingdom and John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus to make these comments. So, here we go.

I think the starting point I have to use is the person of Jesus and his relationship to the powers and principalities of this world. Okay, that needs unpacking to, but, patience. folks, I'll get to it. Behind this starting point is an assumption which I want to make clear. I'm assuming that one of the objects of the Christian life is the imitation of Christ, especially during his earthly ministry. That means that we have to pay close attention to what Jesus did and how he reacted to the people and institutions around him.

That brings us to the powers and principalities. These are, of course, referred to in Ephesians 6:12. The language is very KJV, but Yoder, for instance, makes a big deal about these. To some degree, it is slightly obscure what is meant there, but what I think they probably mean is not only the flesh and blood powerful people, but the institutions of the state and the world. While, certainly, Romans 13 makes it clear that those in power exercise that power which was instituted by God, it is all too common for our human institutions and our human leaders to attempt to usurp more power than they actually have. They have a tendency to try to set themselves up in a position which either ignores or tries to supplant God. This, in its extreme form, can produce certain kinds of idolatry such as leader worship or worship of country. In order to maintain this idolatry, violence emerges in part to coerce the wills of those entrusted to these powers.

Jesus' response to these powers is complex, but it involves the rejection of this idolatry. So, when Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4, 8-11), his last temptation is to offer power, all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus rejects that by telling Satan "Worship the Lord your God and serve only him". That is a radical rejection of the idolatry of power.

Yet, what complicates Jesus' situation is that, from the very beginning of his ministry, he is regarded as the Messiah of Israel which had several meanings. Its primary meaning is that of the warrior king, who would drive out the pagans and restore Israel to independence. So, he kept getting people coming around, expecting Jesus to lead a violent revolution against the Romans. Yet, he refuses and not because of a lack of power. So, even when he is arrested, Jesus rejects the use of force by commenting to Peter (who draws his sword and wounds a servant of the high priest)

"Put your sword back in its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which said it must happen in this way" Matthew 26, 52-54

What strikes me about that passage is that not only does Jesus reject violence, but he makes it very clear that he had the power to wreck the Romans. Remember that the Romans had about 25 legions at the time and only about six to eight of those were in the East. If Jesus decided to unleash his power, he would have destroyed what stood in his way. Yet, he refuses in order to fulfill God's purposes in a very unexpected way.

That fulfillment is, of course, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. I like to think of the crucifixion and resurrection as God's cosmic judo move. That is, Jesus accepts the worse that the powers and principalities can throw at him: a humiliating death and the emphatic disproof of his Messiahship. Yet, by using this horrible death, he breaks the power of sin and death. In essence, he uses the power of sin, the strength of the idolatrous powers and principalities of this world, to destroy them.

Now, of course, we live in an in-between time in which, while we know the power of sin and of powers and principalities is broken, the end has not come. We continue to struggle against evil in this world, but, I would argue, Jesus' example is that we do not return violence for violence, but we try to use the cosmic judo moves that Jesus taught us. Violence and evil will eventually destroy itself, especially if confronted by a refusal to play the power game. Look at Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, if you want to see the power that this kind of non-violent, but still confrontational approach has.

Okay, I do think that is more than enough for one post. I think I'll need to pursue the personal implications of this belief in another post.

Peace,
Phil

Disorientation in Blogsphere

I am disoriented.

Well, a few hours of hunting around the blogsphere (now, there is a grammatical question, is it blogsphere or the blogsphere?) will do that to you. I've flipped around, skimmed, puzzled over and even, occasionally, read from Christian blogs from all over the theological spectrum. Now, I know, a guy can get the theological bends from all this reading, which probably means that it is a good thing that I don't indulge in this kind of surfing very often.

Yet, all this surfing has led me to a couple conclusions.

First, I really don't know what I'm doing with this blog. Mind you, this is not uncommon out here, but my inner prefectionist is getting impatient. Of course, whether that is anything to worry about, I'm not sure. As I tell my students, perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm not pefect, but, hopefully, I'm writing something useful here and, hopefully, I'll get better at doing it as I continue.

Second, you can waste a whole lot of time in blogsphere. Given the stack of Latin marking sitting next to me as I write this, that is not a minor consideration. There is almost an infinite number of writers out there and it is almost impossible to know just where a blog fits in. After this session, I have a few ideas of blogs that I want to follow. I'm sure I'll post some of these as links as I sift and think. Still, I really need to keep some balance.

And with that thought in mind, I'll sign off.

Peace,
Phil

ECUSA's Choice- Rev. Phillip Turner

Over this past week, I've been thinking about an article I ran into by Rev. Phillip Turner on the Anglican Communion Institute pages. Entitled ECUSA's Choice, it sets out an argument which I think is an important one. So, I want to spend a little time unpacking the argument a bit. I do encourage my readers to read the full article, but, hopefully, my comments will also be helpful.

The core of Rev. Turner's position is that, while we claim to act as a catholic communion, most of those who want to preserve that claim, 'progressive' or conservative, actually subvert and distort that reality beyond recognition.

'Progressives', while they are right to ask questions about what are and are not 'church-dividing' issues, presumes, in their concept of communion; a theological/ethical pluralism which suggests that "the demands of enculteration require adaptations in one part of the communion that may not be appropriate in other parts..." So, the key words emphasized by 'progressives' are love, service, respect (including dialogue in the face of disagreement) and hospitality. Doctrinal and moral agreement are, thus, not central to the basis and nature of communion. This encourages the autonomy of local churches and, hence, as I would suggest, the claim by ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada's claim that they can legislate on same-sex issues without consulting the rest of the communion.

On the other hand, Turner points out that conservatives identify communion with compliance with the traditional formulations of Anglicanism: THe Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, the Articles of Religion and Canon Law. So the focus is on the creedal, confessional, liturgical and legal content of communion.

Rev. Turner argues that both positions, while they have some justification, are flawed. He notes in respect to the 'progressive' arguments that he can't quite see how one can be in communion within the body of Christ and still be in intractible disagreement about what that common participation atually means or how members of one body can be so autonomous that they are unwilling to concede a discipline designed to ensure unity of witness and purpose in that body.

Traditionalists, Rev. Turner argues, are making a similar, if opposite, mistake in that they dismiss the human instruments of accountability for a particular form of doctrinal position. He notes that the choice between these two positions is a choice between "a committment to God's open future and...dedication to God's sacred past".

The Rev. Turner argues for a different approach. He dismisses the alternative of just hunkering down and waiting for the storm to past as, he suspect, most individual churches and church members are currently doing. He argue that we can't ignore the issue of what communion is because it is central, not only to to our understanding of church, but also to our salvation. As he notes "God is after the redemption of all things and the "unity, communion, and radical holiness" of his people are, as it were, the first fruits of this redemptive plan" As a result, Rev. Turner argues that the view of communion in the Windsor Report, while not without problems, is more sound than either of the above alternatives because Windsor tries to hold the relational aspects of communion (placing the good of the body over the individual parts) and the aspect of upholding a common confession in tension. The separation of either of these elements is damaging to any concept of communion and, certainly, does not agree with the concept of the church that we have been handed down to us.

What I like about this article (to which this summary has not given justice) is that it really is interested in trying to work out what communion means. Rev. Turner points out, rightly I think, that both sides have decided to 'walk apart' from each other and that the pathway to unity is a hard and narrow road. Rev. Turner calls on us to walk it and I pray that we, the Anglican Communion, learn how do that.

Peace,
Phil