From Lee–the rest is here.
Consequently, mainline churches need to be much more intentional about Christian formation. Incidentally, I don’t see this as meaning that the mainline should become more “conservative.” Rather that they should become more Christian.
No question. And, by the way, the way to address a rise of fundamentalistic tendencies in one’s denomination is not to stop reading the Bible…rather you must read far more of it. The Daily Office is certainly a good start.
Answering the Scotist
The Scotist posted a reply to our ongoing discussion of Mary in a comment which I missed—I’ll now respond and move things forward.
1. The Scotist contends that my reference to his theory of “anonymous Marians” as condescending does not prove it false. He is right. However, while Rahner uses the notion of the “anonymous Christian” address the vexing issue of reconciling the Church’s proclamation of Christ as the only way to the Father with a tolerant pluralism, the Scotist’s use of his wrestles not with pluralism but with intra-Christian theological matter.
I would explain the difference thus: If Rahner asked one of his “anonymous Christians” who happened to be, say, Hindu, if he confessed Christ as his sole Lord and Savior, the only path to the Father, his anonymous Christian would deny it—that being part of the definition of an “anonymous Christian”.
If, in the second century—pre-dating the fourth century Council of Nicaea—you had asked a theologically orthodox Christian—call her an “anonymous Nicaean”—if she believed that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father and was not the first of God’s creations, she would most likely either agree or plead ignorance. I can’t imagine that she would deny it. And yet I and millions of Christians throughout history would deny that Mary is co-redemptrix. God alone redeems. Yes, Mary played a very special and very important part within the unfolding of that redemption, but she does not redeem me. God does.
Of course, this still doesn’t prove it false—because the “anonymous” notion makes it non-falsifiable. But the notion of anonymity is what I find problematic in the Scotist’s instance on defining it as dogma.
2. Then the Scotist makes this puzzling remark:
Moreover, you have not clarified the argumentative role of the distinction between dogma and doctrine. It keeps popping up, but does no apparent work. Maybe a substantive point is buried in these references; it would be nice if you could bring it to the surface. Hide not your light under a bushel, if light there be!
I say puzzling because I already addressed this here:
Moving along, the Scotist addresses my distinction between doctrine and dogma. This, as far as I’m concerned, is why this is worth fighting over. Doctrine is what may be held; dogma is what must be held. To put it another way, it’s possible to have a doctrinally minimalist Christianity and to still have it recognizable as orthodox Christianity. For example, it’s possible to lop off many of the doctrines and practices relating to the saints and the sacraments and still be “Christian” as described by the Scriptures and the Creeds.
I think it’s a lot more fulfilling and a lot more fun to have these, but I’ll recognize Reformed and Baptist folk as fellow members of the mystical Body even if they don’t sing the right antiphons on the Benedictus for the feast of St Ethelreda. But “dogma” means that it must be held in order for it to be a valid Christianity. A “dogma” is the kind of thing that if you went, in the Spirit, to an orthodox mother and father who died before its establishment and asked, “Hey, do you believe X”, they’d respond, “Well, of course—but that’s so obvious we’ve never had to say it…”Would the great Baptist, would the great Reformed, forebearers respond this way in regard to the BVM as “co-redemptrix”—and are you prepared to cut them off from the Body of Christ if they answer in the negative on that account?
While the Scotist says: “There is no reason, as an Anglican and an Episcopalian, I have to convert him and others to belief in the fifth dogma as dogmatic, however desirable conversion would be” he is, in fact, mistaken: that’s exactly what dogma means. If he wants to talk about “co-redemptrix” as a doctrine, then he’d be absolutely correct and I’d have no problem with his decision.
Dogma is the fighting word here.
Perhaps the Scotist is having trouble understanding this. When a doctrine is defined as dogma, Christians are obligated to believe it. It is not optional. Hence the problem of allowing it to be “anonymous”. Those who deny the divinity of Christ are denying dogma; this puts them outside of the faith. Those denying the resurrection of the dead are denying dogma; this puts them outside of the faith as well. The Scotist would like us to believe the same for those who don’t consider Mary co-redemptrix.
I’m going to problematize this notion of dogma a bit further down, but the Scotist is the one who started playing with the “D” word and who won’t let it go and seems to be insisting that it means something other than what the Western Church has always understood it to mean. If you’re going to use a technical term in a technical discussion then use it properly or choose another word!
3. Then the Scotist accuses me of holding a heretical understanding of the will relying as I do on John Cassian. However in his comment and in his subsequent post he displays an utter ignorance of what Cassian holds and what I hold following him. The Scotist writes:
Semipelagianism (hence “SP”)–developed by John Cassian in response to Augustine’s polemic against Pelagius–implies that one makes a free first step toward salvation, a first step that is in the power of the individual apart from grace. That first step in itself is incomplete, and can be completed only with God’s assistance by means of grace.
It seems that SP implies
(A) there can be human actions apart from God’s grace,
and that is a proposition I wish to deny. No aspect of human action is possible apart from grace. Insofar as there is an aspect of human action–moral or otherwise–it owes its reality to God’s act of creation. But God’s act of creation is one of grace–it is a sheer gift. However, since SP implies (A), and (A) is–so far as I can tell–false, it follows SP is false.
Of course premise A is false and neither Cassian nor I would disagree. In fact, Cassian says the opposite quite explicitly. Go read Conferences 3. Here’s some of the pertinent material you’ll find…:
“Germanus [the student interlocutor who summarizes the previous discussion and moves it forward with a question]: In what does free will consist, then, and how may our efforts be considered praiseworthy if God begins and ends in us everything that pertains to our perfection?
Abba Paphnutius: It would be odd indeed if in every work and practice of discipline there were only a beginning and an end, and not also something in the middle. Accordingly, just as we know that God offers opportunities for salvation in different ways, so also it is up to us to be either more or less attentive to the opportunities that have been granted to us by God.”
(Conf. 3.11-3.12.1)“Abba Paphnutius: By these words [of Jeremiah and Ezekiel] we are very clearly taught that the beginning of a good will is bestowed upon us at the Lord’s inspiration, when either by himself or by the encouragement of some human being or through need he draws us to the path of salvation, and also that the perfection of virtues is granted by him in the same way, but that it is up to us to pursue God’s encouragement in either a haphazard or a serious manner.”
(Conf 3.19.1)“We ought to believe with a firm faith that nothing at all can be done in this world without God. … Let no one try to take what we have put forward in showing that nothing is accomplished without the Lord and twist it by a wicked interpretation in defense of free will in such a way that he attempts to remove from man the grace of God and his daily assistance… By what we have brought forward we do not want to remove the free will of the human being but to prove that God’s help and grace is necessary for him at every day and moment.”
(Conf. 3.20.1; 3.22.1; 3.22.3)
It’s patently obvious here that Cassian insists that God’s grace is essential throughout the process. The Scotist’s notion that Cassian holds his premise A is completely refuted here and elsewhere in Cassian’s writings. Yes, human cooperation is required, but God’s grace is always present and active.
Theologies: Scholastic vs. Ascetical
To this point I’ve been playing on the Scotist’s turf and he’s right, it doesn’t seem to have furthered the discussion much. Personally, I blame the turf. So let’s play on mine for a while…
The Scotist likes to play in the realm of Systematic Theology. As its name implies, this body of knowledge deals with seeing Christian thought as a system, as an inter-related whole that can be intellectually apprehended, questioned, and explored. As the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines it: “Its purpose is to investigate the contents of belief by means of reason enlightened by faith and to promote its deeper understanding”. When taken to an extreme, systematic theology leads to a hyper-intellectualization of the faith and faith becomes a set of ideas or propositions that can be expressed as logical syllogisms that are then affirmed or denied. I see this discussion currently on that edge—and that’s not where it belongs.
While I appreciate and sometimes rely on the insights of Systematic Theology, that’s not my turf. Rather, I prefer to play in the realm of Ascetical Theology. As we’ve discussed before, ascetical theology is:
The theological discipline which deals with the so-called ‘ordinary’ ways of Christian perfection, as distinct from Mystical Theology, whose subject is the ‘extraordinary ‘ or passive ways of the spiritual life. It is thus the science of Christian perfection in so far as this is accessible to human effort aided by grace. It also treats of the means to be employed and the dangers to be avoided if the end of the Christian life is to be attained.
Ascetical theology isn’t about investigating the contents of belief and their relation to one another; rather, it’s about how we live in light of those beliefs. It’s less about thoughts and more about habits. As Aquinas or Barth are the chief exemplars of Systematic Theology, the chief exemplars of Ascetical Theology would include Gregory of Nyssa and John Cassian. Evagrius of Pointus holds an important place there too and in mentioning him it’s worth noting that all three of these have been viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by the sysematicians, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. For instance, I think they’re wrong about Cassian. The Scotist is clearly wrong about Cassian. At issue here is perspective. The systematician works with ideas; the ascetical theology works with far more squishy stuff—life and how we live it. Ideas can be expressed in syllogisms that can be proven true or false; there’s a clarity to them that real life lacks. As a result, the systematicians with their clear-cut syllogisms that must fit together just so often find themselves at odds with those whose theological convictions come from the laboratory of human sin and stumblings towards sanctification.
For me, faith is not a body of beliefs to be held. Holding the Christian faith does not consist of checking the correct boxes on a list of dogmas. (I’m not accusing the Scotist of holding this view—but the way he argues can certainly tend in this direction.) Being a Christian is about consciously living out the relationship that Christ facilitated (through incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and his continued presence with us) and proclaimed (in both his words and works) concerning God. It’s embodying the life hid with Christ in God. Holding right beliefs is important because we make choices about how we live based on what we believe. An intellectualist view may say that ticking the right dogma box is what matters. I’d heartily disagree—that’s a beginning, not an ending. We don’t hold doctrines because they assure us of our salvation, we hold them because they ground fundamentals about the relationship that we’re living within. To hold incorrect views is to mistake the nature of the relationship and thus to err when we try to live that relationship out. This, in my view, is what’s problematic about deny Christ’s divinity or the resurrection of the dead. They’re not wrong because they’re lacking the check mark, but because the relationship will be skewed in ways that it should not be.
A Proposed Statement on The Blessed Virgin Mary
Ok—so what about Mary? What is her proper place?
For the moment I’m going to toss aside the Scotist and his “five dogmas” (whatever those actually are) and will discuss Mary as I see her. Perhaps the Scotist will find his dogmas here—perhaps not. In any case, this is a first attempt towards what I think about Mary and her place in the Christian life…
The Blessed Virgin is indeed most properly dignified with the twin titles of Theotokos (God-bearer) and Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church) and it is in relation to these that I consider her.
Christ is our great Exemplar. He is God-made-flesh, the true man (yet very God) who shows us what it is to will and to do what the Father commands. Perfect obedience, perfect holiness. Growing into the Mind of Christ is our great duty and delight as members of the Body of Christ.
Mary is our secondary exemplar. She attained most perfectly those deeds after which we strive as described in the gospels and Acts: to acquiesce to God’s invitation (Annunciation); to recognize the eschatological action of God in society and the world (the Magnificat); to grow Christ within her and give birth to him in the world (Birth narratives); to ponder all things—the Scriptures, the Tradition, our lives—in relation to Christ (Luke’s birth narrative); to intercede for Christ’s eschatological remediation of our human condition—making the eschatological reality present in our lives (wedding at Cana); to invite others to attend to and enact his words (same); to stand unflinching at the foot of his cross (all crucifixion narratives, esp. John’s); to be a witness of his resurrection (Resurrection narratives).
In light of these historical realities, the Church understood the songs of wisdom particularly in the Apocrypal books as referring to Mary—as mentioned here.
If Christ is the exemplar of our consummation (which he certainly is), then Mary is the exemplar of our method. In order to achieve the goal of being like Christ, we must follow in the footsteps of Mary.
As Theotokos, Mary is the literal God-bearer as the one who carried the embryonic Christ and gave birth to him as a child. Given the description of Mary in Scripture, the Church has understood her as God-bearer in the mystical sense as well, the mother cleaves closest to the child and most closely embodies the Mind of her Son.
If we believe the confession of the Church as the Body of Christ, our incorporation into Christ through Baptism and Eucharist, as more than a metaphor but a mystical reality, then as God-bearer, the literal mother of Christ then becomes Mater Ecclesiae as well. As the literal mother of Jesus when we are grafted into him she becomes our mystical mother. But she is the literal mother of the Church, the organization, as one of the first witness of the Resurrection and a participant at Pentecost. She is mystical mother, too, of the faithful as she serves as the exemplar for our ways of being in the world.
Perhaps once again the key to the confluence of realities represented and embodied in Mary is best represented in the Scriptures, in the Church’s interpretation of the Song of Songs. As we pass through the ages there are three enduring—and intertwining—strategies that the church has used to understand the Song as Sacred Scripture. It is a love-song between the Godhead and 1) the Church, 2) Mary, 3) the soul of the believer. It is only when we grasp the nexus of the three that we fully grasp the role of Mary in relation to both the Church and the soul.
So—in my view (subject to correction, growth, and revision, of course)—I see Mary as the second great exemplar within the Christian faith who exemplifies the means to reach the end (the End) who is the chief and greatest exemplar, Christ himself. Our imitation of the means of Mary is to attain the end that is Christ.
In light of this can Mary be considered co-redemptrix? Not in any way that accords with the fullness of redemption. That is to say, if we held a merely Abelardian view that sees Christ solely as Redeemer through serving as Moral Exemplar (no doubt a caricature of Abelard’s thought itself) then there might be grounds for that—but it’d be an uphill argument. However, the Western Church has never held that the fullness of Christ’s redemptive action is entirely subsumed in his role as exemplar. Mystical Conqueror and Spotless Victim are also facets of Christ’s redeeming work.
So if you can find co-redemptrix here, Scotist, you’re welcome to it—but I don’t see it, nor find here a warrant to make it dogma rather than doctrine.
Christopher has a great post that sparked this one.
What he, I, and a number of us talk and dream about is a way of taking seriously the connection between spirituality and the daily grind: how does the daily grind become transported into a a day that is productive and meaningful yet grounded in the deep mysteries suffused by the love of God?
We keep fussing around the notion of Mass and Office practice that grounds our spirituality in specific daily habits that then give shape to the days, seasons, and years of our lives.
Specifically this means:
Christopher notes: “Paul Bradshaw asks, ‘What is our intent for the Office?'” And I answer from my research and grounding in early medieval monastic liturgy that the function of the Office is catechetical while the function of the Mass is mystagogical. That is, the Office gives us the basic data that forms our life. In it we ceaslessless read through the psalms. In it we read through (ideally) the whole of Scripture. It forms us in the basics. The Mass excerpts and illuminates particular facets of the light of Christ as perceived through season and Scripture that illuminate the mysteries within which we live.
The Office provides the fundamental context within which we understand the Mass. The Mass gives us the moments (and means) of grace that shock our daily patterns deeper into a life hid in God with Christ.
Without the Office the Mass offers disjointed and discontinuous vignettes offering little by way of a framework and master narrative. Without the Mass the Office becomes pedantica basic teaching repeated again and again lacking the hints that direct us to the spiritual depths therein.
Historically within the Western liturgy—and I think primarily here of my early medieval research subjects—Mass and Office have been bound to one another and to the season by four fundamental links:
Looking at traditional Anglican Offices, though, the Books of Common Prayer have consistently jettisoned the first three and retained only the forth. However the combination of the ’79 American Prayer Book and the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary have, through ignorance or disregard, further eroded the ties that bound the three together in the collects.
Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the prayer-book collect system will make this pedagogical and theological vehicle operative again.
And yet we are not without classically Anglican resources or hope. Catholic-leaning Anglicans have kept the breviary hymn tradition alive for centuries forwarding both Roman and Sarum options for the continued use of praying communities. And the 1662’s use of seasonal collects for Advent and Lent, the octave retention of the Collect for Christmas signal an awareness and a need for the seasonal patterning in both Office and Mass.
Beginnings
Ok—that’s all very theoretical and all. So what do we do now? I’ve got a suggestion. It’s a simple one but it’s a place to start.
Can busy modern households manage full offices everyday?Can we incarnate full-on Mass and Office Anglicanism in modern family communities? Well, it’s not been our experience. Individuals in the households can pray the Offices given schedules with flexibility, but not the whole family, not together. However, what has been working for us is the use of the Brief Offices on pages 137 to 140 of your BCP. At breakfast we pray the morning one (p. 137) at night we use Compline (p. 140) for bedtime prayers.
Lil’ G (the 5 yr old) memorized the latter when she was 3 and is the major driving force for morning prayer at breakfast.
No, it’s not immersion in the psalter but a bit of a couple of psalms everyday is surely better than none at all. Why not include a seasonal hymn in the space provided for it there and add in the collect of the day before the concluding collect of the office?
It’s basic. It’s doable. It points us towards the pattern of Mass and Office Anglicanism.
Sometimes doctrine is taught better through poetry than prose.
I’ve got a new post up at the Cafe today. It’s on the inevitable topic of religion and politics. (I’m a little puzzled by the title, but ok…)
I also want to draw attention to yesterday’s piece on parables. I try to argue for a pluraity of readings when it comes to the Scriptures. That is, the *more* readings that make sense of a passage within the reasonable limits of a passage’s content and context is a good thing. And, on the whole, I greatly prefer both/and approaches to either/or approaches.
In reference to yesterday’s piece and its discussion, I do indeed want to embrace new methodologies and new ways of looking at the biblical text. What bothers me, though, is when we get a sense that a new reading replaces or supercedes traditional readings simply because it’s new and novel. Yes, we should challenge hegemonic readings that insist that there’s only one way to read a passage and I try hard not to fall into that (though being human, I fail at times…). Nevertheless one of the ironies of the modern situation is that those seeking to overturn old hegemonies are at risk of creating new hegemonies. Yes, let’s multiply readings.
Furthermore when we multiply readings, I think it’s important to keep in mind Paul’s words about spiritual wisdom. The point is not pride but edification. Many readings may well be valid. But it’s our task as leaders and those who care for the church to determine—in humility and to the best of our abilities—which words are most edifying to whom and at what times. Sometimes I need words of rebuke and interpretations that challenge my favorite traditional readings–whether they be early medieval traditions or scholarly traditions. On the other hand, sometimes I need to be re-confronted by a traditional interpretation, challenged to discover why it has returned time and again to Christian minds despite shifting cultures, intellectual currents, and spiritual fads.
There’s a post at the Cafe today about the growing irrelevance of the Church.
We’ve talked about this before and will no doubt talk about it again.
The church will always and everywhere be irrelevant if it is not successfully bring the gathered Body of Christ into an ever deeper contact with the Living God.
It’s not about lobbying or being a better social service agency. It’s not about getting people through the doors and in the pews, either.
It’s about changing lives. It’s about remaking our perceptions of the world, reorienting ourselves towards that which is really real–the God who loves us enough to die for us and who demonstrates that love is more powerful than death, hell, and sin–then behaving in a manner consonant with those insights.
If we are not doing this, then we are truly irrelevant.
As any liturgist worth their salt will tell you, having the text of a liturgy is only a part of understanding a past liturgical experience or a liturgical tradition. As one who works with thousand year old liturgies, I have to continually hold in mind that a liturgy is not a text—it’s an experience, and that what I see on a page before me is not necessarily determinative for what may have occured in an actual embodied space. Thus, historical liturgists are always on the look out for customaries, documents that flesh out how a set of liturgies were actually performed in a certain time and place.
Even when we have a customary, though, that’s rarely the end of the discussion. A customary may help us visualize the liturguy better but, again, it’s still a document and not an event. And customaries have their purposes too, describing not only what does happen but—quite often—what the author wants to happen or wishes to happen. Indeed, some customaries can be polemical treatises that attempt to implant in the reader’s mind one particular model that is to supplant all others. (For instance, whenever I need a chuckle, I read through the section entitled “Of Practices Not Recommended” in Galley’s Ceremonies of the Eucharist… I should also mentioned that it’s been argued that the seminal treatise of Hippolytus upon which so much of the modern Liturgical Renewal movement is based is far more polemical and prescriptive than descriptive of early Roman worship.)
As an American interested in the history of Anglican worship, I have no lived experience of worship with the 1662 BCP. Certainly I can pick it up and read through it; the text and rubrics are clear enough for most anyone to follow. There are, however, ambiguities and options explicit in the text, and anyone who knows the wide vaariety of Anglican theologies, practices, and churchmanship realizes that there must have been differences in how various groups worked with or resolved these ambiguities. Without lived experience, we fall back on customaries.
Principle customaries for the 1662 with which I am familiar are three (Please note, these are intended as introductions, not as authoritative commentary; feel free to add notes or other items in the comments!):
The Directorium Anglicanum: First published in 1858 by John Purchas, a leading Ritualist, this is a guide to the 1662 that seems well suited to larger churches with a traditional architectural format. It argues that the rubrics of the early prayer books expect a certain amount of liturgical knowledge lacking in the priests of its day and thus seeks to “put the Priest of the nineteenth century on a par with the Priest of the sixteenth century as to ritual knowledge. An html copy of the First Edition can be found here at Project Canterbury’s liturgical archive. New to me (and what prompted this post) is my discovery of a PDF version of the Second Revised Edition of 1865. (A read of the preface to the second edition gives you a sense of the battles in the midst of the Tractarian (Oxford Movement’s) growing momentum. A catholic work that harkens back to Sarum uses as well as mentioning (then) contemporary Roman uses, I consider it moderately high. The first edition makes none of the references to the saints or the Blessed Virgin found in Roman or Later Anglican works.
Ritual Notes: This is probably the best known of the catholic customaries. Originally published in 1894, it has gone on to 11 editions. There is no better way to stimulate a discussion that will consume many hours and much gin than to ask a group of Anglo-Catholics which edition is the best. Current answers to “the best” tend to bounce between the 11th, 9th, and 8th reflecting how one feels about recent (20th-21st century) changes to the Roman liturgy and the degree to which current Roman practice should either be followed or rejected. (Brief sample here…). Currently some Continuing Churches sell the 11th, the Western Rite Antiochene Orthodox sells the 9th, and the first edition in html format can be found here. (An 11th edition sits on my shelf though I’d put a 9th edition next to it if I had one…)
The Parson’s Handbook [English Use]: Probably the least known in America, this is the work of “Blessed” Pearcy Dearmer, the classic example of an Anglo-Catholic Socialist. (Wikipedia entry on the Handbook is here.) While the first two references have—as far as I can determine—some links to living traditions, this work attempts to go back to as exclusively Sarum Use as possible. As such it is particularly susceptible to accusations of antiquarianism and “museum” liturgy. Nevertheless, this work did establish a following and while it might have been a novelty when it was first published it is now a living movement of some weight in England. The handbook went into no less than 13 editions in rather rapid succession. (I don’t know if there are arguments over preferred editions here…) Dearmer first penned the work just seven years after ordination; he made revisions as he worked out the implications of his program by implementing it in his own parish. The First Edition in html format is at Project Canterbury; the Forth Edition as a PDF may be found here.
Today is Friday, the 19th. That makes it the first Friday after September 14, the Feast of the Holy Cross and the traditional start of the Winter side of the monastic year. Thus, today is one of the Autumnal Ember Days (along with this past Wednesday and tomorrow). These days are now remembered as the date postulants send letters to their bishops but these were originally dates for ordinations and such. As a result, they became days of fasting and prayer for the Church and its well-being.
Today’s collect:
O God, who didst lead thy holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that thy Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of thy kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
As a Friday and an especially penitential one at that, the Great Litany is entirely appropriate at the conclusion of today’s Morning Prayer (along with a commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, the Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury who founded a flourishing school of learning in Anglo-Saxon England). Fasting and/or refraining from meat today would be in keeping with the spirit of the day.
That is all.
Fr. Griffiths at Hypersync presents a call for Prayer Book Anglicans at the same time that a very thoughtful post by Fr. Haller makes the rounds and shows up on the Cafe. There’s an interesting, inevitable and contructive tension between these two reflections. One polarity is the call to continuity, consistency and stability in the call back to prayer book faithfulness. The other polarity is the recognition of basic reality: there is no monolithic prayer book that contains and describes the whole of the Anglican Way; while the English 1662 BCP has a special claim given its long-standing status and its role during the era of imperalistic evangelism, the Laudian prayer book (Scottish 1637 BCP) and its American offspring should not be denied their proper place. Furthermore, not all the changes motivated by the broad Liturgical Renewal following Vatican II (contained in the American 1979 BCP and other recent national variants) should be excluded as aberrations as some of these changes put far firmer historical footing on the intentions signalled by Archbishop Cranmer in the preface to the 1549 BCP.
Between these polarities, I believe there is a constructive tension that can responsibly be called Prayer Book Anglicanism that is not static but holds within itself possibilities including my preferred position–Prayer Book Catholicism. I would suggest that this position can best be staked out by a set of indispensible liturgical texts from which Anglicans draw their core theology and identity. Here’s my thesis–I’d love to hear your thoughts and disagreements…
Central Thesis: The heart of all Anglican Books of Common Prayer and thus the heart of the Anglican Path of Spirituality is the complimentary use of the Mass and the Office within the structure of the Liturgical Year.
Common crucial Mass texts include:
Common crucial Office texts include:
Wanna be a Prayer Book Anglican? Then I’d suggest that these are the materials we need to be mastering. Not just using, but reflecting upon, digging into, and embodying as we attempt to live our faith. Mastering–as we offer and present unto the Lord our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice in order–not to live into a label, even as one as great as “Anglican”–but into the life in which we are hid with Christ in God.
I noted today’s Daily Episcopalian shortly after perusing the great comments on Third Millennium Catholic’s call for a new Lux Mundi. What struck me (and makes in appearance in the comment I left at the Cafe) is that this Anglican conflict of ours is so often presented by the talking heads as an either/or: either Liberal Christianity or conservative Reformed evangelicalism. But there are so many more options out there.
The main problem with the present options is what Third Mill Catholic brings up in the comments: There is not to my knowledge a sound version of orthodox theology that adequately and systemically engages current science. Most Liberal Protestantism deals with it by retreating from it; most conservative evangelicalism deals with it by ignoring it. And yet—nature, creation, incarnate reality are bound up with the heart of the Christian proclamation.
I don’t know the answer, but in thinking through the options—and in the interest of presenting options, I thought I’d resurrect an old post from three years ago that addresses some of these issues:
So, in an
earlier post I discussed some of the historical and exegetical issues
surrounding the formation of the creeds. However, stating the origins
of a thing and discussing its current applications are two different
things. To summarize briefly, the creeds were developed to serve as a
meta-narrative that located the key parts of the Faith by securing a
literal meaning to select portions of biblical narrative, specifically
parts in question by heretical groups. Fast-forward 2,000 years and
here we are today… [One quick procedural point: When I think of the
creeds my first thought is of the Apostles’ Creed rather than the
Nicene. Thus, it’s the one I work off of instinctively.]
The creeds were formed in a different age with radically different
philosophical conceptions and scientific notions. They are based in a
foreign way of understanding literary documents and of conceptualizing
religious communities. They functioned in certain ways then, how do we
use them now? Have these categories changed too much for them to be
useful?
Intellectually, the biggest problem that I can see with using the
creeds in the modern church is a disconnect in worldviews, especially
the understanding of the physical world. The modern American worldview
is heavily conditioned by Western science and preeminently Newtonian
physics. (As cool as quantum physics may be, it hasn’t penetrated to
the daily assumptions of normal people yet and probably never will.)
The two most important point of this belief system in relation to the
creeds are these: 1) scientific theories are verified by observation of
reproducible data and 2) reliable science is predictive, which follows
logically from 1. That is to say, if I throw a quarter up in the air
one hundred times, I can be confident that it will come back down.
Furthermore, if I have a steady hand and a good eye, I can consistently
throw it in such a way that I can more or less describe its arc by
means of a mathematical equation. These assumptions form the bedrock of
our understanding of reality.
What does this have to do with the creeds? Just this: the majority
of the beliefs in the creed, especially those concerning the first two
persons of the Trinity, deal specifically with completely
non-reproducible, unpredictable events many of which contradict what we
know from our quotidian experience of reproducible data. Once again,
that’s to say, I know how babies are made and I know how dead bodies
act. The creeds fly in the face of that knowledge. Or, to push a
different edge, I don’t know how the world was created and will never
have the opportunity to observe the whole process again. And I don’t
know scientifically what it means to have a God-Man and how his body
would or would not share the same biochemical structures as the rest of
us. In other words, these events are not repeatable and we have no data
to prove or disprove the creedal statements except by analogy to
repeatable phenomena. We cannot directly access either the moment or
acts of creation or the resurrection. At least with creation we can
study what remains but even that can not answer questions of causes—it
will only demonstrate mechanisms.
The problem, then, is a conflict of worldviews. A literal
understanding of the creeds as they were originally intended to be
understood is in conflict with a modern scientific worldview. Now we
must ask what to do with this conflict.
In order to resolve the conflict and to achieve consistency of
thought, one worldview must win and supplant the other. Thus on one
hand we have those who pick the biblical/creedal worldview over the
scientific worldview. Young Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, a
general suspicion that physical scientists are part of an atheistic
conspiracy against God and the Family seem to be the fruits of this
side. On the other hand are those who pick the scientific worldview
over the biblical/creedal worldview. And yes, this view has a long and
distinguished history in Western intellectual circles from the Deists
on forward to the likes of Bishop Spong and clergy who say the creeds
but confess to believing very little of them or taking them only in an
allegorical sense. Many if not most of the people in the seminaries
that I have attended or been around have been quite congenial to this
second view. But are these really our only options?
One of my favorite conceits in the Science Fiction movies of yore
was the preferred manner for the unarmed Space Hero to destroy the
Killer Robot hard on his heels. It’s easy enough to do—just yell out
some sort of conundrum (what rhymes with “orange”?)—and the Killer
Robot would lurch to a halt, smoke pouring out of convenient orifices.
Ever seen anyone try that when being pursued with a guy with a gun?
Didn’t think so. He might think about it for a second, shrug, and start
shooting…
My point is this: human beings live in a messy, contingent,
incarnational world. Things are always more complicated than they seem.
Humans are fully capable of working simultaneously within multiple and
conflicting worldviews. This came home to me most strongly when I first
read Bultmann’s classic Jesus Christ and Mythology as an undergrad; the same thought is expressed in his essay from this book. He writes:
Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced
to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer
possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the
world-in fact, there is no one who does. What meaning, for instance,
can we attach to such phrases in the creed as “descended into hell” or
“ascended into heaven”? We no longer believe in the three-storied
universe which the creeds take for granted. The only honest way of
reciting the creeds is to strip the mythological framework from the
truth they enshrine-that is, assuming that they contain any truth at
all, which is just the question that theology has to ask. No one who is
old enough to think for himself supposes that God lives in a local
heaven. There is no longer any heaven in the traditional sense of the
word. The same applies to hell in the sense of a mythical underworld
beneath our feet. And if this is so, the story of Christ’s descent into
hell and of his Ascension into heaven is done with. We can no longer
look for the return of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven or hope
that the faithful will meet him in the air (I Thess. 4:15ff.). …
It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless
and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and
at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and
miracles.
My response on first reading the last line was to say…but we do. We
do and can believe in contradictory things at the same time. Smoke
doesn’t belch from anywhere—we may get confused in extreme cases of
overlap, but we can live quite comfortably using insights from a
pre-scientific Christian world view to those from a contradictory
Newtonian physics perspective mingled with those from a contradictory
quantum physics perspective to those of a Platonic universe.
Specifically speaking as an American Pragmatist, I go with the
worldview that works. When I’m in “installing computer components”
mode, I’m all Newtonian physics. When I’m in “playing cards” mode, I’m
all about quantum physics and probability mechanics [which with my
pop-scientific knowledge may explain why I don’t play cards for money
;-D]. When I wonder about my salvation, I go pre-scientific all the
way.
How does this make me neither schizophrenic nor intellectually
inconsistent? Because I’m not hegemonic about any of my worldviews. I
think that they are all models that serve to describe certain
aspects of reality from certain perspectives. If I was wondering where
a quarter would go if I threw it with a certain velocity at a certain
trajectory, I feel confident that Newtonian physics could describe the
arc for me and, furthermore, that chaos theory could give me the
probability that the Newtonian equation would prove incorrect. These
equations are not reality, though; they map it and offer a way to
understand it especially when I approach it with certain questions. I
don’t think that any of these worldviews offer all of the answers to
any apprehension of reality and that gives me the freedom to switch
between them when I need to.
So—where does that get me with the creeds? I believe the creeds
literally. Scientifically, I can’t tell you how they work. I have no
idea how to model the Ascension mathematically—which is the part that
ties my logical brain into the worst knot. It also doesn’t bother me
that much. As the only humanities guy in a family of hard scientists I
take the sciences seriously. I also know their down-side when they are
taken as a philosophical system; they offer only an empirical
materialism of cause and effect. It’s the epicureans redivivus.
I find them lacking in power. And maybe power is the point. In living
between worldviews I have found a certain amount of power in a
scientific worldview, the kind of power that confirms its truth. I can
calculate events and have the events turn out a certain way. I have
found the beauty of equations replicated in microscopic corners of the
world. But the same is also true of the religious, pre-scientific
worldview; I have experienced the power of the resurrection in my life,
of the communion of the saints, and God as creator in ways that verify
their truth. While the scientific worldview has power in its realm it
cannot touch the spiritual side of my life the way that the creedal
truths do. (And the same holds true the other way–science offers far
more compelling arguments in the realm of things material.)
As a result when in the field of personal belief I experience a
conflict between the creedal worldview and the scientific worldview, I
go with the creeds. I cannot explain them scientifically, I cannot
explain the mechanics of the Trinity but I believe it and I believe
that it matters for how I live and move in the world. One of the
reasons that I allow the creeds to trump science too is because of
hope. I hope that there is more to life and existence than empirical
materialism. Faith in the creeds allows a belief in the mundus plenior,
a world where reality cannot be bounded only by what can be weighed and
measured. There are wonders in the world that our science does not
explain. Maybe some day it will but even if it does it will not
diminish my belief in something beyond the purely physical.
In short, I’m proposing an active cognitive dissonance. Not an
unthinking one that does not recognize the conflict between worldviews,
but one that both notes it and appreciates that all of our worldviews
are reductionistic models of a reality that we can never completely
quantify or wrap our heads around. Call it a creative contradiction.
So, what do you think? Does it work?