Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

Episcopal Budget Suggestion

There is a great deal of conversation going on at the moment amongst those who talk about such things around the budget of the Episcopal Church. I’ll let those wiser and better informed than I chime in on how to fix what’s wrong with things. Me, I have a different kind of suggestion…

The way things are trending is to suggest that more ministry “stuff” be done at the local or the network level. Ok…so how do you find out what the best stuff is, where the really good ideas are? Yes, good ministry is being done out here—so is the bad stuff. And statistically speaking there’s probably more bad and mediocre than good. How to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats?

One option is to use a grant-leveraged process. That is, various “big” bodies that have funding invite grant proposals from local groups that think they’re doing good stuff. Then the big body staff folks sort through them and fund the ones they think are doing the best.  I think this may be a step forward because it does provide a way to look at and work with efforts that are already going on the ground.

Another option is like the grant-driven model but with a free-market twist… One initial caveat: the kinds of things that I’m thinking of here are in a few areas—chiefly communications, web app stuff, and Christian formation programs. I think this approach will work well with them, maybe not so much for other areas.

I’d recommend not purely a grant-driven model, but also a contest-based model (and it probably would work best as a both/and rather than an either/or). Here’s an example of what I have in mind: A Digital X prize for the best Episcopal mobile app. The rules would be simple. Individuals or teams would create an app that would run on both Android and iOS platforms to promote Episcopal spirituality or identity—leaving it deliberately and broadly open. The app would have to be released into the actual marketplace by a deadline. Then, a month or two later, a board would meet and—factoring in comments from actual users–cash prizes in the low thousands would be awarded to the first, second, and third place apps with perhaps some honorable mentions as well. The apps that place could have the option of being picked up by Church Publishing (or another body if there’s one that fits…).

The same could be done for Christian Formation: A Digital X prize for the best 6 Session Class for Adults on the Sacraments (or what have you). All entries would have to be open source—freely available—and, again, cash prizes would be awarded.

The rationale here is that a contest-based system would inspire people to put the work in to create some really good programs (code-wise and education-wise) that would be of great benefit to the church as a whole. The good stuff would be used whether it wins or not and the bad stuff…won’t. The contests would serve as the impetus for their creation and circulation, but the enduring artifacts would remain despite the outcome. The church is the real winner. For what it would cost a publishing house to do one program, they could crowd-source (hopefully) quite a number of quality products that could be promoted widely.

It’s a thought…

Spiritual-But-Not…

I’ve been thinking a bit about the whole Spiritual-But-Not-Religious (SBNR) classification. Folks tell us it’s growing; anecdotally, I’ve got a number of Facebook friends who identify this way. As the Church writ broadly looks at mission/evangelism/formation, this is the group that looms largest. Have we done a decent job of asking who they are, what they want, and what will be necessary to communicate the gospel to them?

Since some exchanges at the Cafe a few days ago, I’ve been pondering exactly what the relevant subcategories are of this rather amorphous mass, because I think that we’ll make some serious mistakes if we try to treat “them” as uniform. I’ve come up with a few, but I’m sure there are quite a number to be identified. Here are some that I can think of personally (and these are cartoony caricatures, not nuanced psychologically informed portraits):

Spiritual-But-Not-Disciplined (SBND)

In my experience, this is the most common sort. The SBND are those who are attracted to spiritual things but hate the idea of someone telling them what to do. These are the folks who like to make it up as they go along—then change it all (or drop it all together) on a monthly basis. Thus, the “spiritual” part affirms that they think spiritual things are good; the “not religious” part affirms that neither a community or tradition can have authority over what they want to do and when they want to do it.

Spiritual-But-Not-Integrated (SBNI)

These are folks who may be highly spiritual but tend to experience spiritual practice as a “collect-’em-all” kind of enterprise. Yoga on Mondays, Kabbalah on Tuesdays, Centering Prayer on Wednesdays, Drum Circle on Thursdays…you get the picture. Related—maybe even overlapping—with the SBNDs, the differentiation here is not necessarily on a level of discipline or follow-through, but a lack of a big-picture framework that makes sense of the individual pieces. Thus, the “spiritual” part affirms that they think spiritual things are good; the “not religious” part affirms that they don’t see a single religious tradition that enables them to hold all the things together that they want to embrace.

Spiritual-But-Not-Bigoted (SBNB)

These are folks who tend to have a high regard for ideological purity. They may or may not be inclined towards spiritual practices, but they’re certainly not going to affiliate with a religious institution with nasty baggage. These are the people who like to remind everyone about the Crusades, the Phelpses, and abortion clinic bombings whenever the topic of religion comes up. They couldn’t possibly be part of something that promotes so much hatred. Their default stance tends to be that all religion is unreasoning fundamentalist religion and that therefore only unreasoning fundamentalists would be interested in religion. (Interestingly, I’ve seen this stance preached in some sci-fi books that my SBNR brother-in-law has loaned me recently…; a new missionary method for the New Atheism?) Thus, the “spiritual” part affirms that they may accept that there’s more to life than the flatly material; the “not religious” part affirms that they won’t have anything to do with a religious tradition that doesn’t pass their purity requirements.

Spiritual-But-Not-Committed (SBNC)

These are the folks who tend to affiliate with particular lines of thought and may even self-identify with a religious group but for whatever reason just don’t get there. It may be a plea of busyness on account of the kids and their activities or it may be that they prefer bagels & the Times on a Sunday morning than dragging themselves to church. Thus, the “spiritual” part affirms that they think spiritual things are good and they may even connect with a tradition; the “not religious” part affirms that they don’t or can’t commit to the actual obligations of a religious community.

Spiritual-But-Not-Satisfied (SBNS)

These are folks who also self-identify with a religion, maybe even a specific denomination, but are not satisfied with any of the local communities. They’re too high or too low or too stiff or too loose or whatever… In some cases, a lack of “fit” is a genuine reason, in others it may be an excuse–to others or even to themselves–that hides a more genuine reason. Thus, the “spiritual” part affirms that they think spiritual things are good and they may even connect with a tradition; the “not religious” part affirms that the religious communities on offer don’t meet their needs on the points they want meeting.

I see here that I’ve floated into the “‘Religious’ But Not Attending” realm as well, but I think that there’s sufficient relation between them that it makes sense to include them as well.

Looking across these groups (and imagining that there are more that I haven’t identified here) I can’t imagine that one strategy fits all. My hunch is that the SBNI are the ones who are most willing to have contact with a religious community or who would be most open to having a friend invite them to a religious “thing.” But trying to appeal to the SBNB the same way as the SBNI doesn’t strike me as likely to be effective…

I don’t know—what are your thoughts?

Brief Thought on Confirmation

I’ve been thinking about Baptism and about bishops for two entirely different purposes. What’s common between them, however, is that both touch on the subject of Confirmation.

Confirmation has become something of an issue recently in the Episcopal Church. The more recent material on Baptism comes down hard on the prayer-book understanding of Baptism as “full initiation…into Christ’s Body the Church” and I would agree (BCP, 298). But then, these folks tell me that Confirmation no longer has an important place—or perhaps not any place at all—in Christian initiation. The phrase most commonly used is that it is a “rite in search of a theology.” After all, if Baptism is full initiation, what is there left for Confirmation to do?

I don’t buy it.

Principally, I think we’re coming at the question from the wrong direction. The bishop is the focus of unity and the sacramental center of the diocese. The bishop’s blessing is literally present in Baptism through the Chrism that, if used, must be blessed by the bishop (BCP, 298). Confirmation, though, is the rite that reifies the sacramental relationship between the bishop and the laity of the diocese. We are baptized into Christ’s Body the Church—the invisible Church—but we are Confirmed into our diocese and the obligations of local incarnate church life. It’s our connection into the basic administrative and sacramental unit of the Church’s life—the visible Church.

Liturgical Encoding of Hermeneutical Practices

As I listened to the Exsultet and the Vigil on Saturday night and again to the lovely version linked to by bls, I’m struck again by what I often find when I dip into antiphons, responsaries, and many of the minor propers for feasts: they are modeling devices. That is, the way that they relate the Scriptures to one another is deliberate and intentional. I haven’t done a full enough study to say that it’s consistent.

What’s going on here is that the early medieval church in the West set up a cycle—perhaps curated is a better word—a liturgical cycle. At some point. McKinnon sets a significant part of this activity (at least for the Mass) in the late 7th century and since his book folks have been debating as to whether or not he was right.

In any case, they connected together pieces of Scripture that they thought fit, and wrote texts like the Exsultet that laid out how they understood theology and therefore the ways that Scripture ties together.  Their understandings of what was normal and proper and fitting are grounded in the patristic material that they absorbed and from the ecclesial perspectives that they brought to it. When these texts are sung together by later generations, the connections are made and reinforced even if they are not expounded. That is, simply from singing the Mass year after year, connections between various biblical texts get made because of how they function liturgically. As a result, texts like the Exsultet and the way that the propers hang together both encode and transmit a very particular set of understandings about biblical interpretation and how it’s properly done. Modern Roman and Anglican congregations that are rediscovering the minor propers are moving back into a stream of transmission that has patterned the Western Church’s encounter with Scripture over centuries.

The Historic Western Liturgy itself transmits a patristically-grounded early medieval method for reading and praying Scripture.

Perhaps some day I’ll have the time to line things up properly and make a thorough study of all of this…

More on CWOB

To the amazement of both the far left and the far right in the Episcopal world, there is a growing vocal movement in the Episcopal Church explaining why Communion Without Baptism is a bad idea.

I’ve contended for some time that the push for it is driven by identity politics not sacramental theology; that is, proponents want to see themselves and their institution as inclusive and their opponents as exclusive. As a result, the rhetoric of the movement whenever possible seeks to link CWOB with both the ordination of women and queer folk and suggests that it’s a package deal.

The other day, Fr. Robert Hendrickson wrote a great piece that thoroughly demolishes the shoddy logic behind this linkage. If you haven’t read it, you should. M and I met Fr. Robert through the Society of Catholic Priests and we always enjoy our conversations with him whether deep, profound, or fun.

I’m aware that there are many who view a shift to CWOB at General Convention as a fore-gone conclusion.

I think they’re wrong.

There is a core of catholic minded, credally grounded laity and clergy who feel strongly about this matter and who are making our voices heard. Expect to hear more in the coming months.

On the Authenticity of the Great Commission

Looking over the whole Lead thread on CWOB, this brief aside from Donald Schell jumped out at me:

I will note that ‘The Great Commission’ a poorly attested addition and arguably late addition to Matthew’s Gospel

Ok—let’s talk about this. I’ve seen this kind of thing in several places and it is begging for some informed discussion.

Basically, the bibles that we read from in church are “eclectic texts”. What does this mean? It means that they are translated from a base Greek text that has been compiled from literally thousands of manuscripts by hundreds of scholars who have been at work on this process for about a hundred and fifty years. The goal of this eclectic text is to recover the earliest possible form of the text; to read the books of the New Testament in the state in which they left the authors’ pens—or, at least, the best that we can do towards that.

Our evidence consists of three major bodies of Greek texts and two additional categories. We have three types of Greek biblical texts determined by style of writing and materials which is roughly correlated to age: papyri, uncials, and miniscules.

Papyri tend to be the oldest. That is, we have papyrus fragments of the New Testament that date anywhere from the 7th century (fairly late) to roughly the year 200 (the celebrated papyrus P46). The problem is that the papyri tend to be fragmentary meaning that we only have bits and pieces. P46, for instance, only has parts of the Pauline Letters. Most contain only a few verses. So—they’re old, but very spotty.

Uncials get their name from their letters—all uppercase. Many papyri (particularly the earlier ones) are written in these letters two but the key difference between the two is material: the uncial manuscripts were written on parchment (prepared skin) rather than papyrus (early fiber paper). As a result, the uncials preserved a heck of a lot better than the papyrus. Uncials containing large sections of the Bible were big projects and expensive to produce in Antiquity—we only get them after the legalization of Christianity. Thus, our best, most trustworthy, and most extensive witnesses to the NT text are the big early uncials. There’s a handful of them that are considered the primo references often referred to as the Great Uncials.

Then we have the miniscules. They’re called this because they’re written in lower case characters and they tend to be later than the uncials.

The two other categories are early translations from the Greek into other languages, and citations from the Church Fathers. The latter will become quite important in a moment so file that away…

A whole bunch of Germans (other people too—but mostly Germans) have dedicated their scholarly lives to going through all of the little bits and manuscripts and have sorted them based on the quality of their readings. The best manuscripts are those with the most careful and accurate scribes and that give us a faithful reproduction of the text. Because of their work, we can rank the various manuscripts and sources on how well they represent the earliest recoverable text by specific books. The best are referred to as the “First-Order Witnesses” and these are the places where we go when we want to see what a text said.

Basic procedure for assembling an eclectic text, therefore, is to start with the major first-order witness uncials, create the text where they agree, then supplement from any papyri that are earlier than the actual base uncials in question. Miniscules provide minor evidence.

Going back to original claim on the authenticity of Matthew 28:19 let’s be very clear: There are no first-order witnesses that omit any part of this verse as we are familiar with it. None. One of the major later unicals (D) adds in a “now” that also appears in early pre-Vulgate Latin versions and two uncials (B and D) have a slightly different form of the participle “baptizing”, but  nothing is missing. There are no surviving papyri of Matthew earlier than the Great Uncials that contain this verse. Remember, the papyri are fragmentary—we don’t have an old one that covers this section.

So—where is this claim coming from if there is no hint of it whatsoever in the actual manuscript evidence? A dude named Conybeare noticed that when the early Church Father Eusebius of Caesarea (died 340) cited this verse—and he did it a couple of times—that he consistently cited it in a different form: “Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations in my name”. No mention of baptism or of the Triune formula. The argument goes that since Eusebius was writing before the Great Uncials were written, and since Eusebius was relying on the great text-critical work of Origen, he may be referring to an earlier form of the text than the Great Uncials.

Thus, one Father may have recourse to an earlier form. However, nobody else writes it that way and, by way of counter-example, we have Tertullian (died 220 or so) citing the usual form of the verse in his treatise On Baptism (Ch. 13).

The problem with this argument is that there is no way that it can be disproven. We can establish that Tertullian writing around the year 200 in North Africa knew the standard text but that doesn’t rule out Conybeare’s suggestion.

The big problem, as I see it, is that Conybeare’s suggestion (also forwarded by Kirsopp Lake and other contemporaries) rests entirely on a textual paradigm of citation. That is, the assumption is that Eusebius is looking up every passage and copying it word-for-word from an older and possibly unique text that also happens to be better than all of the surviving ones. Rather than, say, writing it from memory in the form he likes it best…

I’ve noted in my other research that Eusebius’s version of the Beatitudes actually was different from the received version—he flips Matt 5:4 and 5. So does Origen, the Great Uncial D, and some of the Latin, Syriac, and Boharic translations. Note that—here there was a material change and it leaves a number of footprints in the tradition…

Furthermore, the Eusebius theory fits handily into a philosophical construct favored by certain modern folks. That is, some people believe that the Church only gradually came to think of a Trinity and therefore they view any mention of the Trinity with suspicion and call it a late addition to the text whether there’s any textual warrant for it or not.

The claim, again, is this:

I will note that ‘The Great Commission’ a poorly attested addition and arguably late addition to Matthew’s Gospel

The evidence is this:

  • The verse appears as received in all of the first-order witness that contain it.
  • One Church Father, Eusebius writing in the early 300s, writes it differently
  • Other earlier Church Fathers don’t write it differently
  • In other cases where Eusebius was looking at a genuinely different text we see signs of that change in other text traditions

On the strength of the actual evidence, then, we’ve got to conclude that, contra the starting claim, the Great Commission in its familiar form is very well attested textually and there is only one hint read through a particular philosophical construct to the contrary.

QED: Not buyin’ it.

The Difference

So—what’s the difference between the Last Supper and when Jesus fed 5,000 not counting women and children on the mountainside? It’s all the same basic meal practice, right?

Wrong.

The difference? All thirteen attendees of the Last Supper died for their faith—except (tradition tells us) St. John who died in exile. No word on the fates of the 5000+…

 

Stuff Like What I Would Be Writing

As I have all too many other things going on to draft blog content, I’d like to point you to some good stuff from folks who have more blog time than I do but who are writing the kind of stuff I wish I’d written.

One of my favorite topics where is ascetic theology which examines the place of spiritual practices and the cultivation of virtue within the Christian journey that is best described as living into the life of God. In that vein, check out Robb Beck’s take on McCabe’s On Aquinas and the discussion there of the relationship between cultivation of the virtues and divinization.

On the Bible front, if your interesting in a neo-patristic alternative which takes modern investigation of the Scriptures seriously yet still retains a primary focus on the life and practice of faith, you need to keep an eye on the post.catholic project—I think Fr. Thomas is going in some similar directions.