Category Archives: Theology

Long-Winded Response on Celibacy at Cafe

My latest piece is up on the Cafe today and a follow-up piece will appear tomorrow. It’s in response to Fr. George Clifford’s response to my earlier comments on celibacy.

I engage his points on celibacy, but I’d like to flesh out my initial issue a bit more. That is, he contends—bringing in Elaine Pagels—that since there was a diverse group of religious beliefs all invoking Jesus that there was no “normative” or “real Christianity” to which we can look back and, as a consequence, we all have to find our own spiritual way.

I’ve heard this line or things like it far too often in the Episcopal Church (and other mainline Protestant denominations) to let it go.

You’ll note that the piece over there is long, especially by Cafe standards. Well, what follows is the section that I cut to get it slimmed down enough to be that long…

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Fr. Clifford begins with curious section focused on Elaine Pagels. I have not read the book to which he refers (Adam, Eve, and the Serpent) but the logic which he cites is quite familiar to me concerning the multiplicity of early Christianities.

Stepping back, whenever readers note points of conflict or discontinuity within a literary corpus (like the scope of early Christian literature), they have some options about how they will read these materials. Do we 1) read them in such a way to highlight an underlying continuity among them or 2) read them in such a way to highlight the discontinuities? Let it be known that points of conflict and discontinuity appear in the writings of the New Testament and in early Christian literature; this point is not under dispute. So how shall we read them?

Historically, the reading communities that make up the Church have chosen to read the writings of the canon in continuity with one another. We acknowledge differences between, say, Paul and the letter of James, but choose to read them as complimentary trusting that together they reveal the inseparable nature of authentic Christian faith and its flowering in works of Christian love. Strands of academic scholarship upon early Christian literature—sometimes in conscious opposition to the Church’s strategy—have chosen to highlight the discontinuity between the theologies and writings, most famously in the important work of F. C. Baur (d. 1860), founder of the Tübingen school and one of the fathers of modern biblical criticism. A focus on discontinuity has been a central characteristic of biblical scholarship since Baur and, as the discipline was interested in the reconstruction of the history of early Christianity, often went so far as to posit different communities embodying the various discontinuities found in the text. Thus, they posited distinct and different groups of Jewish Christians, Johannine Christians, Pauline Christians, Petrine Christians, Gnostics of various stripes, etc., all existing in discontinuity with one another. In certain academic circles, this positing of communities has grown into a mania where imaginary communities are constructed at the drop of a hat based on hypothetical documents—Burton Mack’s The Lost Gospel being a representative example.

One difficulty with these multiple reconstructions is their basis in history. Aside from parsing discontinuities in texts, our only sources of data on actual historical communities are the writings of the “early Church Fathers”, preeminently Irenaeus and Eusebius. I put “early Church Fathers” in scare quotes because those who argue for a multiplicity of nascent Christianities will argue that the terms “Christian” and “Fathers” are loaded categories: they assume a coherent body called “the Church” and they assume that certain authors are “Fathers”—privileged authorities. And indeed, responsible readers must note that these early writers were writing for the explicit purpose of defining who was “in” and who was “out”, who taught a “legitimate” version of the faith and who did not. Yes, these very writers are witness to the fact that many different groups considered themselves to stand in relation to the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament.

Now—here’s the key point. Irenaeus writing around the year 180 or so about the various movements and their relation to the beliefs of his community passed along three basic marks that distinguished what his community and those aligned with them believed: a canon of Scripture, a creed or “rule of faith” that insisted upon particular interpretive principles when reading the canon, and apostolic succession—that the teachers of the community had been taught by teachers who had been taught, ultimately, by the disciples themselves. (In his own case, Irenaeus had been taught by Polycarp who was taught by the Apostle John.)

By this time, then—AD 180—there was a common teaching subscribe to by communities across the Mediterranean who distinguished themselves over and against other religious communities by the canon, creed, and apostolic succession. And now the kicker…turn to page 876-879 of your Book of Common Prayer and you’ll find the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and a resolution from the Lambeth Conference of 1888 stating that the marks of the church are the canon, the creeds, and the apostolic succession (Historic Episcopate) with the explicit addition of the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist.

Yes, there were a variety of early religious communities who claimed a connection to Christ and his teachings. But as 21st century Anglicans we affirm that we stand in historic relation with one of them—the one with whom we share a canon, creeds, and teachers

Back to the Liturgy Theses

Thesis 6: Liturgy forms—and it is both vehicle and content. Our liturgy doesn’t “inform” or theology or vice-versa; liturgy is kinetic theology.

  • To go a step further I’ll repeat a comment I made over at Bob+’s place, “Fuzzy liturgy implies fuzzy theology and fuzzy theology damn sure incarnates fuzzy liturgy.”

Thesis 7: Following on 6, any change in liturgy is also a change in the public theology of the gathered local community.

  • Yes, it does matter if the offering plates get put on the altar or on the credence or if they’re whisked away to the sacristy at the offering. Each decision makes some kind of statement about the whole and that’s a point I want to highlight for a moment. I fully recognize that human motion tends to be multivalent. A movement can mean several different things and individual movements can even be interpreted in contradictory ways. That’s why context is always an important factor in interpretation. For instance, some might say that placing the offering plates on the altar demonstrates that the congregation is truly offering the fruits of its labor and those things that matter most to secular society to God; alternatively, the plates may be whisked away to maintain an uncluttered sanctuary space that communicates a  “noble simplicity” and a focus on full attention to the divine. Neither one necessarily invalidates the other—and indeed the same action in two places may communicate two different things (if not more…).
  • It is precisely because of this multivalence, though, that the worship leaders of the parish—lay as well as clerical—should be able to articulate the theology incarnate in the liturgy and to articulate it at regular intervals to the congregation (preferably in educational settings rather than the liturgy-turned-didactic of an “instructed Eucharist.”)
  • I seem to remember Vicki+ talking about educating her parish by walking through the Eucharistic prayers and discussing the contents thereof; go and do likewise!

Thesis 8: Thus, the authorized liturgies of the Books of Common Prayer offer a complex and interconnected way of being that are intended to mystically unite us to the Triune God in the sacraments, spiritually lead us into the mind of Christ, and pedagogically form us in the faith of the Church

  • I want to especially highlight the phrase “complex and interconnected.” Christian theology and practice are woven in a complex web. Changing something in one place often logically and practically requires changes elsewhere—often unintentional but logically necessary changes that we may not see at the time of the initial change. When major changes are made in the liturgy, it takes a great deal of time and active work to understand all of the implications on Christian belief and practice. Naturally, the best time to do this work is before any change is made.

Continuing Theses on the Liturgy

Clearly, these begin where I left off last time…

Thesis 4:  The logic and methods of the Western Liturgical Cycle were uniquely preserved and promulgated in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and its successors in a way not found in the other Reformation movements nor in the Roman Catholic Church until recently.

  • First, we recognize that the Mass/Office/Liturgical Year appear in the 1549 BCP are are intended to function together. Furthermore, in the preface to that book, contained in the historical documents of our current BCP and coming in large part from Cranmer’s first attempt to reform the Office, Cranmer explicitly cites not only what appears to have been the practice of the churches of Agustine and Chrysostom but to early medieval practice. First, a general reference that seems to fit much patristic preaching:

There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation of God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth. And further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion.

Now—while the evidence suggests that the Scriptures were read in course in various times and places within the patristic period, there seems to be no scheme that we know of that connects the readings of certain books to specific times. Indeed, the first record we have of such a scheme is Ordo XIII. This text in the form we have it seems to have been written down in the first half of the eighth century. This is the ideal cited by Cranmer later in his preface:

But these many years passed, this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories, Legends, Responds, Verses, vain repetitions, Commemorations, and Synodals, that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four Chapters were read out, all the rest were unread. And in this sort the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima; but they were only begun, and never read through. After a like sort were other books of holy Scripture used.

While recognizing this shema, though, we must note that in a fit of protestantism, Cramner neither enacts it nor includes it in his work, preferring to begin the Office lectionary in January with Genesis and to procede in biblical order without regard to the liturgical seasons. Certainly we who have played in more missals and breviaries than can easily be counted appreciate the truth of Cranmer’s words : “Moreover, the number and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the cause, that to turn the Book only, was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times, there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” …even when we don’t agree with his solution.

  • In contrast, no other Reformation group attempted to hold Mass/Office/Liturgical Year together to this extent. Nor has the Roman Catholic Church promoted the observence of the Office to the laity to the same degree that the Anglican intention did.
  • I do think there has been forward progress in this matter recently within the Roman Catholic Church with the allowance of the vernacular and the creation of the Liturgy of the Hours, but the Daily Mass culture, I think, obscures and displaces a Daily Office culture.
  • That having been said, Anglican practice has never measured up to Anglican intention. In the main, one is hard-pressed to find a consistent Daily Office culture within the Episcopal Church. There are pockets of practice, but it is not widespread nor as widely known as it ought to be.

Thesis 5: The logic and methods of the Western Liturgical Cycle because of its central place in our normative texts—the Books of Common Prayer—describe the heart of authentically Anglican Christian Formation.

  • I see that “Western Liturgical Cycle” has become a technical term to refer to the complex of Mass/Office?Liturgical year. This is handy but may become problematic—it’s current use is provisional…

Initial Theses on the Liturgy

Thesis 1: The liturgical cycles of Mass/Office/Liturgical Year as envisioned by the 7th century and enacted in various places by the 9th/10th is the single greatest system for Christian formation ever produced by the Western Church.

  • When I say “produced by the Western Church” it’s important that we realize that I do mean quite a lot of the Western Church was in on creating it. That is, the liturgy was not something created in Rome and exported out.  To quote a heavily underlined and starred passage in my copy of Vogel:

The period that extends from Gregory the Great [590-604] to Gregory VII [1073-1085] is characterized by the following facts regarding liturgy:

a) the systematization of the liturgy of the City of Rome and of the papal court (the Roman liturgy in the strict sense);
b) the spread of this liturgy into the Frankish kingdom through the initiatives of individual pilgrims and, after 754, with the support of the Carolingian kings;
c) the deliberate Romanization of the ancient liturgy of Northern Europe (Gallican) at the behest of Pepin III and Charlemagne
d) the progressive creation of a ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ set of new rites in the Carolingian Empire through the amalgamation of the Roman liturgy with the indigenous ones;
e) The inevitable liturgical diversification resulting from these Romanizing and Gallicanizing thrusts;
f) the return of the adapted Romano-Frankish or Romano-Germanic liturgy to Rome under the Ottos of Germany, especially after the Renovatio Imperii of 962;
g) the permanent adoption of this liturgy at Rome because of the worship vacuum and the general state of cultural and religious decadence that prevailed in the City at the time. (Vogel, 61)

  • The gap between the 7th and 9th/10th centuries that I allude to refers to the gap between planning and execution.  I.e., here’s People’s Exhibit A of what I mean. This is a lectionary list from the late 9th century that shows that, while Masses from Wednesday and Friday in the time after Pentecost ought to have appointed Gospels, at that time the scribe couldn’t locate what they were… The gaps got filled in by a standardized system in the 10th century (Type 3 alt).
  • The Western Church has produced a lot of great writers, thinkers, and teachers. And yet I don’t believe any of them have ever surpassed this construction of the liturgical year as a method for forming Christians into the mind of Christ. Partly because so many Spiritual writers assume these liturgical cycles as the starting place—their works proceed from here.

Thesis 2: The full formative potential of the Western liturgical system, however, was rarely—if ever—fully realized due to the vocational and educational limiting factors placed upon it.

  • Engagement with the full liturgy was restricted to those who lived in intentional liturgical communities: only monastics (of both sexes) or canons ever got the “full experience”. The laity got the leavings.
  • Too, it required a fluent knowledge of Latin. Not only was this not open to most laity, but not all clergy and monastics had both the ability and the education necessary.

Thesis 3:  The formative power of the Western liturgical cycles was not due to its superiority in a single mode of instruction but due to its comprehensive character;  it integrated the intellectual, doctrinal, emotional,  affectional, aesthetic, kinetic, and dietary elements into a holistic system.

  • to poach a paragraph directly from chapter 3:

Within the life of the early medieval monastic establishment, a change of liturgical seasons signaled a change in life—liturgical and otherwise. The beginning of a season marked a change in the biblical texts that a community read, a change in the musical settings and the textual contents of the life of prayer, possibly changes in the colors of vestments in the oratory, even changes in what the monastics ate and wore. The changes of seasons affected life around the monastery; as a result, they affected thinking around the monastery. The seasons were comprehensive periods of formation, mimetic modeling of an aspect of Israel, her Christ, or his Church that engaged the mind with doctrines, the heart with religious affections, and the body with acts of penance, ascesis, or holy joy. Reading the gospels within these contexts foregrounded either primary or latent meanings in the text that accorded with these doctrines, affections, and acts…

These are the initial historical theses that seek to a lay a foundation before moving to the contemporary issue.

Traditional and Contemporary Revisited

Donald Schell has a piece up at the Cafe that sounds a whole lot like what I posted a bit back. These were written completely independently of one another and I’m amazed at the similarity of themes that run through them. Especially when one considers the very real difference that exist between Donald and myself.

I actually believe that we have similar philosophies here but there are very real differences in how we put them into practice and would wager that the central difference is what we here the Spirit calling us to do.

But where do you go from there? Do you argue that one is hearing the Spirit right and not the other? Or do we suggest that the same Spirit is calling us in different directions based on our different social/spiritual locations? Certainly I prefer the latter to the former but–let’s face it–that raises as many questions as it solves…

However it continues, I think that the whole relation of “tradition” and what we do with it to our liturgy/public worship is an essential discussion and will have implications on our future shape.

New Cafe Piece

I’ve got a new piece up at the Cafe. A little background—this one came directly albeit obliquely out of on-going conversations that I’ve been having with Donald Schell (yes, that Donald Schell)  about liturgy, faith formation, and the place of tradition in our reflection.

Christopher will also recognize some key items on liturgy and tradition that we’ve been discussing together for quite some time…

Too often discussions about liturgy and worship fall into a set of stale rhetorical traps that pit binaries against each other: traditional/contemporary; Spirit-led/rubric-driven, spontaneous/over-planned, etc. The simple fact is that these are not helpful as blanket categories any more (if ever). What I’m expressing here is a understanding of Christian theology and liturgy that is a contemporary appropriation of traditional materials rooted in a pneumatology that understands the spread of human history as the playground of the Spirit. “Listening to the Spirit” doesn’t just mean cocking your ear now—although that’s an undeniable part of it.  Furthermore, while liturgy’s principle aim is the praise and worship of God, we must also attend to its secondary purpose of communal Christian formation.

The bottom line is that if our corporate worship is not playing a major role in our transformation into the mind of Christ than there’s a problem. And the problem isn’t necessarily the liturgy, either—sometimes it’s us!

On Love

Lee has pointed to some very good pieces, the first written by bls against the contention made by Philip Turner in “First Things” that a theology suggesting that” God is love, pure and simple”, is “unworkable” (You can read the excerpts she provides there). The second is from Christopher working off of bls’s piece and some questions asked by Lee himself.

I don’t have a whole lot to add that they haven’t already said, and will only offer another bit of gooey liberalism no doubt from a source that no self-respecting “First Things” author would recognize:

221. But St. John goes even further when he affirms that “God is love”:44 God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:45 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.

In my short life, I have learned a few things about love. Most of them have been learned since I got over the shallow notions of romantic love that I was taught by the culture and have been truly formed by my on-going relationship with my wife and my children. For it is through those relationships that I am taught ever more deeply what this little four letter word that we take for granted really means.

Love is hard—because genuine love is always transformative. It changes you: how you think and how you act. Sometimes we pull away from that pain and change whether it comes from God or the humans closest to us.And that leads me to my second point.

I think for many of us, the hardest thing to do with love—is to receive it.

We say that God is love. And we are absolutely right.  Now all we have to do is let it into our lives…

The Case of the Crucifix

I’ve recently seen a story floating around of a C of E vicar who took down a large crucifix from the front of his church and replaced it with a shiny modern thing; I rolled my eyes and assumed the worst.

However—over at bls’s place I’ve now seen a photo of the removed crucifix. and I’ll reproduce it here:

creepy_crucifix

Ok, I’d probably take it down too. What bls’s analysis captures though is entirely absent in the Telegraph article that she includes and needs to be said more loudly:

  1. It should be removed not because it’s a crucifix but because it’s bad art.
  2. The reason that it’s bad art is because it’s bad theology.
  3. The reason it’s bad theology is best captured by bls herself:

The problem with this piece is that it’s merely horror-movie scary; the figure on the cross does not look human, but is a monster. You forget the crucifixion entirely because you’re too focused on the hideous monster creature up there.

It doesn’t look human – and that’s the worst thing you could do to Christ on the cross, I think.

Bingo!

Crucifixion is indeed a horrific act and a terrible way to die and, no, we shouldn’t diminish that. However, this crucifix does not look like the suffering of a human and precisely the point is that the God-incarnated-human died a human death.

Ascetical Theology at the Cafe

Ok, Annie–you asked for it—so now it’s up.

Well, it’s not a summary of the piece, but it’s an introduction to the topics he was discussing. Now, you’ll notice that the abbot uses the term “moral theology” where I use “ascetical theology” the reason is because all of the items in moral theology of which he speaks are congruent with and used in a manner that I associate far more with ascetical theology. Moral theology for me reaches its hey-day later and is found in the writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori.

In any case, there it is…

Maria Mater Ecclesiae

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.