Monthly Archives: January 2015

On Borg

I saw the news last night that Dr. Marcus Borg has died. May light perpetual shine upon him.

I have not actually read many of his books despite that fact that he generally falls into my New Testament (NT) specialty. I have heard him summarized, and have read those who argue with him and with whom he argued. This year I will make it a point to read more of his works.

At this point, my feelings toward him are rather ambiguous. I know that he is widely read within the Episcopal Church, and that he has helped many progressive Christians and Episcopalians to be able to read the Bible again. He presents a perspective and an entre into the Bible that allows it to be read critically and rationally over and against fundamentalistic reading strategies. That he has helped people pick up and return to the Scriptures is a good thing.

However, I have noticed distinctive interpretive trends in most of the people I know who cite him with approval. Modern biblical scholarship of the 20th century (and the latter half of the 19th) focused on Bible as history. Thus, the questions biblical scholars brought and solutions they offered were around sketching the history of the early Christian movement and in the development of its ideas as reflected in the various writings of the New Testament texts.  What I have heard of Borg and what I have read in those I consider his fellow travellers—Crossan, Funk, the Jesus Seminar crowd—is that they apply a hermeneutic of suspicion while they use the NT as a historical data mine. They’re certainly within their rights and privileges as NT scholars to do so; I think they go overboard and their results are skewed because they misconstrue the nature of their data-set.

When this approach passes out of scholarship into the lay realm it takes the form of this sort of narrative:  Jesus was a revolutionary (peasant or otherwise) and was both co-opted and misunderstood by the early church. Thus, to understand him and his message properly, the claims of the early church should be downplayed (or dismissed). Furthermore, potential seams or disagreements within the writings of the NT and in the apocryphal literature are extrapolated into full-blown incarnate communities. The narrative of the formation of the canon of the NT and the emergence of the early church into public view in the 4th century, therefore, is of a supressive and repressive faction that becomes “orthodoxy” by getting rid of all other claimants (particularly the more diverse sorts!). In some variants of this narrative, Constantine is invoked as the one who declares Jesus divine in a complete departure from the peasant revolutionary who kicked off the original Jesus movement.

When this narrative is imported into congregations as theology, the result is a semi- to fully-Arian christology (one that considers Jesus as an exemplary person and teacher, but not a divine being) and a generally anti-orthodox approach that sees the early church and its councils as repressive agents of Empire.

A central problem is that, in our churches, this narrative and its resulting theology is seen as the only alternative to fundamentalism.

And it’s not.

I’m not a fundamentalist; I don’t read the Bible like a fundamentalist. I read it as a poetry of God’s presence and, in doing so, I read it in the company of the early church. I don’t read the Bible as a dead historical site to be excavated for its ideas, but as a living city that invites us to both imagine and live the world that God imagines.

So—I need to read some more Borg. I realize that I tend to respond to something of a caricature of his thought; I’d like to be able to be more fair to him and to be able to speak to what he does say rather than what I hear others report him to have said.

Anglican Breviary Online Update!

I realized that I haven’t given much of an update on the Anglican Breviary online recently.

The wiki can be found at anglicanbreviaryonline.org.

Last night I caught up on some work I had backing up including quite a bit of material from the post-Christmas period and Epiphany (with much thanks to Richard and Scott!). I also modified the side-bar to make it more user-friendly, and to give better access to the seasonal material that has been entered.

Here’s our status:

  • Most of Advent is in.
  • The text of Christmas is all in; there are a few bits that need the formatting markup. The majority of that is in, though.
  • Epiphany and its Octave are mostly in. A couple of days are lacking, as is some more formatting.

I’d love to start a push towards Lent before we actually get there so we can get the material in both here and also into the St. Bede’s Breviary.

The issue—as always—is one of time and resources. (My ISP is reminding me it’s time to re-register the URL as well…) I’ll be contacting those who have helped who are currently without assignments for entering more text; if you’d to help out, leave a comment or drop me an email. And, as always, donations are appreciated and help move things along. (I just learned that my button on the wiki wasn’t working through the “front door” url, so I’m co-opting the St. Bede’s Breviary link—just earmark it for the Anglican Breviary and list the form you want your name to appear on the Benefactors page!)

Sacramental Ecclesiology

If you haven’t read this piece on Children and the Eucharist, you should.

The writer has accurately identified the next big theological crisis facing the Episcopal Church. All of the questions around communing children, the place of Confirmation, if/whether/how “First Communion” is “a thing,” and the communing of the unbaptized are simply different ways of entering a larger complicated inter-related question.

The 1979 American Book of Common Prayer placed recovery of a baptismal ecclesiology at its center. This was a good and correct move. The problem, however, is that a baptismal ecclesiology functions properly within a broader sacramental ecclesiology. What I mean by that is this:

Church is fundamentally about a sacramental path to discipleship.

Everything from how we comprehend the coherence between the local church and the mystical Church, how we enter the church, how the church frames and provides its rites and sacraments, how the church frames and understands its saints must proceed from an understanding of the church as a mystical vehicle for the grace of God given, received, and expressed normatively in her sacraments.

Baptismal ecclesiology is a very important piece of this complete vision—necessary but not sufficient!

What we need to do now is to flesh out the rest of our sacramental ecclesiology in a clear and coherent way that reflects deep continuity with the Scriptures and the Apostolic faith and is true to our current experience and context. Until this has occurred, we will find ourselves running around with incoherent band-aid fixes…

On the Evolving Situation: Bishops & Bicycles

I had a long and deep post on this situation written. I thought it was pretty good, but wanted to think about it and edit it again before posting so I saved it as a draft.

The draft didn’t save; the post is gone.

At the moment I have neither the time nor the energy to reconstruct it, but I do hope to at a later point. For the moment, I just want to say these few things:

  • As a cyclist and the husband of a cyclist in Baltimore, people outside of this area need to know that this situation has a specific local importance. The crash has thrown a huge light on a rampant problem that hopefully will be leveraged to create safer cycling conditions. Far too many times in the city and metro area, drivers have been let go with a light slap on the wrist after injuring, maiming, or killing cyclists, especially if said drivers have privilege and connections; the cycling community is fed up with it. As a result, this case has acquired a large symbolic meaning for Baltimore cyclists and voters entirely apart from church concerns and church politics. Keep in mind that the State’s Attorney and the judge(s) involved in the case are playing to the local crowd more than they are to you.
  • On one hand, clergy are human. As humans, they are just as susceptible to weakness, temptation, sin, and really dumb choices as anyone else. On the other hand, clergy have voluntarily offered themselves as leaders and exemplars of communities of spiritual and moral transformation. Nobody forced you to become a priest or to stand to be bishop so, yes, your moral choices do receive more scrutiny than the average layperson. Deal with it.
  • As a community of spiritual and moral transformation, we do have a responsibility to help our clergy in their humanity, specifically in setting up gracious and caring systems of accountability. When the girls and I moved churches recently (long story—more on that later), one of the first questions I asked the rector of the church where we landed was: what day is your day off and do you actually take your days off? I truly believe that all clergy ought to be accountable to their vestries with a listing of their time showing a breakdown of how their working time was allocated within broad programmatic areas (worship, Christian ed, sick visitation, regular visitation, sermon prep, worship, meetings, admin, etc.) and also recording whether they actually got their days off—properly defined as a 24-hour period where there was no job-related activity including answering emails and phone calls! Furthermore, vestries need to have it beat into them that clergy not taking their days off is not a sign of dedication, but of over-work and possible disease. Clergy are very susceptible to golden calf syndrome—they love to be needed. Ego addiction is a real thing.
  • We as a diocese and we as a church need to have some conversations around accountability when there are known problem areas. A lot of heat has been focused around the fact that the diocesan Standing Committee, Search Committee, and our diocesan bishop knew in the vetting process that there was a prior DUI, and that the electing convention did not have this information. What concerns me more is that once the election occurred and she was elected, there does not seem to have been an accountability mechanism set up to ensure that it never happened again. I could be wrong on that—but my hunch is that I’m not…
  • How do we create mechanisms for accountability that do not have a stigma associated with them that will help us lovingly care for our human clergy, particularly those who need attention and assistance in specific areas? I don’t know. But we need to do more and better talking about it.

On the Current BCP, A Response

A very interesting article showed up in my Twitter feed this morning: How radical a revision? by Fr. Matthew Olver. You should definitely take the time to read it. He’s wrestling with a question that I think should be coming to the fore in the next decade or so—a critical reassessment of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer particularly in terms of its connection with what has come before it. Just as Roman Catholic liturgical scholarship is exploring the issue of continuity or rupture around the changes wrought by Vatican II, we are starting to see the same discussions surface in the Episcopal Church as well.

Olver’s piece focuses on a phrase by Urban T. Holmes, suggesting that the ’79 BCP should be and is a shift “away from Cranmer and the Tudor deity.” Olver goes on to question how this shift could have occurred:

What makes the Holmes/Shepherd declaration (“we must move away from Cranmer and the Tudor deity”) so provocative is that many trumpet the 1979 BCP as the “triumph of the Anglo-Catholic movement,” and this movement was most certainly committed to the “classical theology” that Holmes and Shepherd, among others, deemed no longer “viable.”

Olver then goes on to list certain apparent Anglo-Catholic victories. He will later argue that these don’t ultimately save the book from this “move away”, but I want to make a comment on his list before getting there.

While he mentions things like the expansion of the Calendar and the appearance of Noon Prayer, he did not list what I regard as the single greatest shift in Episcopal liturgical understanding. Remember, even at the foundation of the first American prayer book, the pattern of weekly worship was that implied by the earlier English books:

[In colonial America] On Sundays the usual forms of worship were, in the morning, the sequence of Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-Communion, with sermon and prayers, followed later in the day by Evening Prayer, again with a sermon. Holy Communion was celebrated four times each year, although there was a monthly Communion service in some places. (Hatchett, “The Colonies and States of America” in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer)

This Sunday morning sequence didn’t change until the late nineteenth century. Again, Hatchett: “That sequence had always been the usual Anglican practice, but in the 1892 Prayer Book it was no longer required; Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-Communion could be used separately.” (I had actually thought that Convention had allowed this earlier in the nineteenth century, but Hatchett doesn’t mention it here.) As is well known, the pattern of quarterly or monthly Communion was common up through the years of the ’28 BCP and into present memory. Where the ’79 BCP alters this significantly is in the first substantive sentence of the book:

The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in the Church. (p. 13)

This proclamation of the Eucharist as the principal act of worship on Sundays and Feasts is a major shift and the single biggest change to Episcopal worship practice since the separation of the three-service block. This change cannot be overlooked as a major alteration and an apparent win for the Anglo-Catholic side over and against Evangelicals and others.

You can’t have a catalog of changes and apparent wins without including this one.

That having been said, I do actually agree with Olver that the ’79 BCP often appears to be more of an Anglo-Catholic victory than it really is. I wrote about this a while ago and said it this way:

Of the classical church “parties” two were happiest with the ’79 BCP: the catholic wing and the broad church wing, particularly among the elites for whom the LRM [Liturgical Renewal Movement] represented an ecumenical consensus open to a liberality of spirit in contrast to liturgical and ecclesial conservatism; the “Spirit of Vatican II” and the “Spirit of ’79” made common cause with one another.

The Catholic wing thought they had made major strides because many of their longstanding issues with the Cranmerian reform had finally been undone. The liturgy had moved back towards a classic Western (Roman) model. The Calendar was once again filling with the heroes of the Great Church and of Western Catholicism in addition to a variety of Anglican worthies. Antiphons and propers were licit again. The Eucharist was the primary service on Sundays.

While these things were accomplished, it had more to do with their consonance with the aims of LRM than a tide of catholicity sweeping through the Episcopal Church.

Due to the influence of the LRM and its influence in the upper reaches of liturgical thought in the Episcopal Church, the ’79 BCP ended up having a more catholic appearance due to 1) the recovery of historical ideals that also guided the reform of the Roman liturgy post Vatican-II and 2) ecumenical rapprochement with Roman Catholics. Furthermore the performance of the liturgy likewise took on a more catholic appearance with a proliferation of chasubles in places where they would have been anathema as ‘too popish’ just a generation before.

. . .

We are at the point where we must come to terms with the fact that we have inherited a prayer book with a greater catholic appearance but without catholic substance behind it. To put a finer point on it, we have a catholic-looking calendar of “saints” yet no shared theology of sainthood or sanctity. While a general consensus reigned that the appearance was sufficient, the lack of a coherent shared theology was not an issue. When we press upon it too hard—as occurred and is occurring in the transition from Lesser Feasts & Fasts into Holy Women, Holy Men into whatever will come next—we reap the fruits of a sort of potemkin ecumenism that collapses without common shared theology behind it.

I think the coming discussion needs to wrestle with whether the prayer book shapes or reflects Episcopal theology. My own sense is that the ’79 book sought to do both. For my part, the changes the subcommittee I co-chair will be recommending to General Convention regarding the Calendar seek to do the second: reflect. More on this later…

To pick up the thread of Olver’s article again, he ultimately locates the challenge to the “classical theology” and “Cranmer and the Tudor deity” in the notion of baptismal ecclesiology. This is a fairly standard position for the book’s critics. And, not surprisingly, he draws on Colin Podmore’s critique of baptismal ecclesiology.

I have a couple of issues here.

First, both Olver’s article and Podmore’s paper present the evidence in such a way to suggest that the notion of baptism as the entrance to ministry is a very modern notion and one done chiefly for the sake of social activism—particularly with an eye to the ordination of women and active homosexuals. This is an untenable move. You cannot have a full and proper discussion of baptismal ecclesiology and the ministry without at least a reference to Martin Luther’s Letter to the German Nobility.  In this piece, Luther is arguing against the notion that the pope and his clergy can over-ride the authority of the secular princes; one of the chief ways he does it is through an appeal to baptism:

It is pure invention that pope, bishops, priests and monks are to be called the “spiritual estate”; princes, lords, artisans, and farmers the “temporal estate.” That is indeed a fine bit of lying and hypocrisy. Yet no one should be frightened by it; and for this reason — viz., that all Christians are truly of the “spiritual estate,” and there is among them no difference at all but that of office, as Paul says in I Corinthians 12:12, We are all one body, yet every member has its own work, where by it serves every other, all because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and are all alike Christians; for baptism, Gospel and faith alone make us “spiritual” and a Christian people.

But that a pope or a bishop anoints, confers tonsures; ordains, consecrates, or prescribes dress unlike that of the laity, this may make hypocrites and graven images, but it never makes a Christian or “spiritual” man. Through baptism all of us are consecrated to the priesthood, as St. Peter says in I Peter 2:9, “Ye are a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom,” and the book of Revelation says, Rev. 5:10 “Thou hast made us by Thy blood to be priests and kings.” For if we had no higher consecration than pope or bishop gives, the consecration by pope or bishop would never make a priest, nor might anyone either say mass or preach a sermon or give absolution. Therefore when the bishop consecrates it is the same thing as if he, in the place and stead of the whole congregation, all of whom have like power, were to take one out of their number and charge him to use this power for the others; just as though ten brothers, all king’s sons and equal heirs, were to choose one of themselves to rule the inheritance for them all, — they would all be kings and equal in power, though one of them would be charged with the duty of ruling.

To make it still clearer. If a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken captive and set down in a wilderness , and had among them no priest consecrated by a bishop, and if there in the wilderness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves, married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, absolving and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as though all bishops and popes had consecrated him. That is why in cases of necessity any one can baptize and give absolution, which would be impossible unless we were all priests. This great grace and power of baptism and of the Christian Estate they have well-nigh destroyed and caused us to forget through The canon law. It was in the manner aforesaid that Christians in olden days chose from their number bishops and priests, who were afterwards confirmed by other bishops, without all the show which now obtains. It was Thus that Sts. Augustine, Ambrose and Cyprian became bishops.

Since, then, the temporal authorities are baptized with the same baptism and have the same faith and Gospel as we, we must grant that they are priests and bishops, and count their office one which has a proper and a useful place in the Christian community. For whoever comes out the water of baptism can boast that he is already consecrated priest, bishop and pope, though it is not seemly that every one should exercise the office. Nay, just because we are all in like manner priests, no one must put himself forward and undertake, without our consent and election, to do what is in the power of all of us. For what is common to all, no one dare take upon himself without the will and the command of the community; and should it happen that one chosen for such an office were deposed for malfeasance, he would then be just what he was before he held office. Therefore a priest in Christendom is nothing else than an office-holder. While he is in office, he has precedence; when deposed, he is a peasant or a townsman like the rest. Beyond all doubt, then, a priest is no longer a priest when he is deposed. But now they have invented characters indelebilis, and prate that a deposed priest is nevertheless something different from a mere layman. They even dream that a priest can never become a layman, or be anything else than a priest. All this is mere talk and man-made law. (http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-03.html, emphasis added)

Luther does have a lower view of the priesthood than many Anglicans throughout history, and his formulation here takes issue with certain aspects of the Apostolic Succession (but not with others!). However, to suggest that the idea that [baptism = ministry] is a recent invention of social activists is factually incorrect. Indeed, I see it as part of the “classic theology” that we seek to retain—an expression of it, rather than an overturning of it.

On the contrary, the problem that I have with the phrase “baptismal ecclesiology” is that I believe it is not being thought through enough and that all of its implications have not been fully considered or applied. In its semi-official use “baptismal ecclesiology” is intended as a rejection of clericalism and exclusion. Where it does not tread is into broader questions of its implications for ecclessiology particularly around the dead—which was the impetus for my first major article against Holy Women, Holy Men.

There’s a lot more to say on that last point but in the interest of time, I’ll save it for later.