Month: June 2006

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The discipline of the whole Church

What is a bishop?

A bishop is the discipline of the whole Church on us – which is nothing other than the Lordship of Christ effective for us – packaged in the form of one person. The bishop represents, and makes available to us, the discipline of all other parts of the Church – geographically, historically, eschatologically. The bishop is the whole Church in one person. We can go and complain to him, seek explanations from him, and we also have to encourage and to pray for him. We always have to ask – beg, demand – the bishop to give us the whole Christ, through all discipline and in all the Scriptures (This is apparent from the paragraphs of the Windsor Report I have posted). We have to remind the bishop to love and care for us. And of course each bishop has to be under the discipline of all the ecumenical councils of bishops, across the world and across the whole history of the Church.

We are under the discipline of the whole Church. If we believe that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are mistaken to believe that bishops, and clergy, can only be male, nevertheless we cannot ignore them or defy them. To do so would be lack of love, and neglect of what the whole Church has always held to be good. Roman Catholics and Orthodox are sure that they are preserving the tradition of the Church on this matter. What if they are right? Once again, the issue is not so much the ordaining of women or homosexuals, or any new self-identifying minority, but just of doing of what the Church has never done before, and doing it without it being the act of the whole Church. If we make new rules, whether about ordination or about anything else, we have failed to understand that the Church is the reconciliation of all opposing parts, and so the costly unity won by Christ, that now enables our mutual subordination and love, in which we consider each better than ourselves. Our talk about making new rules for ourselves is a deliberate walking away from the Roman Catholics and Orthodox. We can not act without the rest of the Church and still be Church ourselves. If we walk from the unity of the Church the truth of the Church leaves us too.

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DiNoia on Christian Humanism 3 – defending reason against unreason

There are four areas where recent papal teaching has articulated a variety of propositions that need to be affirmed. Veritatas Splendor teaches that there’s no freedom outside of truth, There is a slim chance that human beings could find happiness outside of some proper understanding of what it is to be human. This does not mean that there are no truths that human beings can know about themselves, it just means we owe the world to proclaim the fullness of that truth. We owe it to the world, not to come to the table, in the spirit of a pluralism of religions, or the pluralism of ideology as simply equal partners, but with conviction that we have something to contribute to shape the development of a consensus. If you’ve read these encyclicals, you know they stand on their arguments.

Evangelium Vitae tells us, contrary to what modernity thought, that the eclipse of belief in God has turned out to be the greatest threats to the human, not the exultation of the human. The fact that God was eclipsed, has not made human life safer, but more dangerous. The message of Evangelium Vitae, that God is the greatest friend of the human must be proclaimed without obsessing about this. Without a sense of the transcendent dimension of the human, you have what our Holy Father calls of “the culture of death.” The great irony at is that at the end of the 19th century the pope had to defend faith against reason, but here at the end of the 20th the pope has had to defend reason against unreason.

Augustine DiNoia Divine Wisdom and Christian Humanism

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Broken Church

Christopher Wells, writing for the ever-excellent Anglican Communion Institute, is wondering what the Archbishop of Canterbury makes of the debacle of the just-finished General Convention of the Episcopal Church of the United States. Wells suggest we read Archbishop Williams’ lecture on a previous great Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey.

‘Williams seized Ramseyâ??s suggestionâ??enshrined in his classic of the 1930s, revised in the 1950s, The Gospel and the Catholic Church â??that the center of Anglicanism, her primary vocation, is to witness to the perpetual passion of Christâ??s body which must lead ineluctably, according to divine providence, into the heart of the gospel. In this perspective, the peculiar â??lightâ?? of Anglicanism within the wider oikumene will be provisionality itself, following on a proper penitence: a readiness to go willingly, and perhaps be lifted up, to suffer whatever further sacrifices may be necessary for the visible reunion of the one Church.’

Christopher Wells Wounded in Common Mission: The Term of Inter-Christian Divisiveness

Here is Rowan Williams himself, turning from Michael Ramsey to Ephraim Radner:

‘The situation is made harder by our cultural setting. The unhappy irony of the Reformation legacy is the steady slippage from the confessional protest of Luther to the consumer choices of modern Christianity in the West – the search for the Church of your taste and preference. Ephraim Radner, one of the most exacting and rigorous of contemporary American theologians, has outlined the irony in a recent book, Hope Among the Fragments. The Broken Church and its Engagement of Scripture, in which he insists that the Church is only itself if it engages with the specific form of Christ as Scripture proclaims it; but also that a movement for reform, purity or separation in the name of this engagement always drifts towards that typically modern pluralism which fails in the long run to do any justice to the utter givenness of Godâ??s initiative, fails to think the Church theologically.

â??As institutional churchesâ??, he writes, â??as formal Christian communities, we now stand in the same condition as that of the first Christians after the resurrection. We have no articulated theology, we have no proven structures of authority, no experienced framework for the reading of Scripture that is common to us as a churchâ?? (p.175). This may be optimistically presented as great opportunity; but it should first be recognised as â??the judgment of Godâ??s historyâ?? – that is, as the result of long-engrained habits of unfaithfulness in our practice. We have forgotten how to be churches. Starting new ones will only compound the problem: the traditionalist is in the same boat as the liberal to the extent that both are prisoners of a denominational market (p.205), even when appeal is constantly being made to the model of Reformation confessio – or even early Christian martyrdom. The only theologically honest response is to acknowledge that Godâ??s providence has placed us in a divided and in various ways unfaithful Church, and that we have to learn there a form of repentance (individual and corporate) that is our best route towards the form of Christ: â??That God has placed us in this church at this time must mean that he would have us grow in the from of life that bespeaks the Churchâ??s repentant readiness to be healedâ?? (208).

Radner goes on to elaborate what is involved, practically and theologically, in â??staying putâ?? – bearing with the contradictions of the visible institution, â??faithfully navigating a hostile church while remaining in communion with itâ?? (212). It is the most accessible contemporary form of being a fool for Christâ??s sake in a â??Church of fools, filled with waiting, filled with patience, filled with perseverance, filled with prayer, filed with endurance, filled with hopeâ?? (214). But at the larger structural level, this means a polity and policy for our churches – and Radner speaks about Anglicanism in particular – that â??hold dependencies in orderâ??: we are bound up in so many relations of dependence – to Scripture, to our past, to our present partners and our present members – but we have to find a way of keeping them in tension, not seeking to relieve the pressure by removing whatever ones we currently find hardest or most offensive (229). And this in turn means a call to the churches to discover a form of holiness that effectively challenges the localisms and self-assertive separatisms that are the most effective cultural captivity of the modern Church. It is no surprise that Radnerâ??s last paragraph but one in this difficult and necessary book takes us back to Ramsey, and to The Gospel and the Catholic Church.

The Anglican Churchâ??s embrace of incompleteness, which Radner sees as central to Ramseyâ??s vision (218), is grounded in a description of the Church â??in terms of the fate of Christâ??s body in passion and self-giving – an incompleteness divinely opened to the divine gift of new lifeâ?? (233). Here is the Churchâ??s task, its one task that is truly its task as Church. We may not know where the â??realâ?? Church is in abstract terms – and if Radner is right, the question itself is going to lead us in the wrong direction in our present climate. But we may still know where the event of Christ is going on, and we may still know what we must do to align ourselves with it. Thereâ??s the problem, of course: it is more attractive to go in quest of the real Church than to seek for the pattern of cross and resurrection in the heart of where we happen to find ourselves. But Ramsey implicitly warns us that the quest can be a way back to the self-defining and self-protective religious institution that always distorts or stifles the gospel.

Somewhere in this is a very substantial paradox – that the harder we search for a church that is pure and satisfactory by our definition, the less likely we are to find it. Embracing the incompleteness is not a recipe for passive acquiescence in a Church that is corrupt, implicitly heretical or indifferent to the gospel; it is a recognition that the Church is always at best on the edge of all these things and that the self-seeking individual who believes that the Churchâ??s problems are always in the souls of others has the capacity to tilt the community further towards its perennial temptations. We have to be Lutherans after all, in the sense of refusing any model of the Church that allows us to think of the Church as a body to which we choose to give our allegiance so long as our individual spirituality is nourished by it – rather than as the very form of our Christian being. As Lutherâ??s example shows, this is far from being a passive acceptance of the concrete tyrannies or infidelities of the Church in history; but it demands a theological vision of those failures. And it also requires a difficult spiritual discernment as to how, in an unfaithful Church, we try to live our way into the one event in which the Church actually subsists.’

Archbishop Rowan Williams The Ramsey Lecture

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Bishops of the Church of God in the Anglican tradition guard the faith, unity and discipline of the Church

This General Convention has now given its response to the recommendations of the work of that Commission, known as the Windsor Report….The responses which the Convention has given to the clear and simple requests of the Lambeth Commission, the clear and simple requests indeed of the Anglican Communion, are clearly and simply inadequate. We reaffirm our conviction that the Windsor Report provides the way forward for the entire Anglican Communion, the ecumenical relationships of the Communion, and the common life of a faithful Episcopal Church. Further, we have agreed to submit ourselves to the Windsor Reports requirements, both in what it teaches and in the discipline it enjoins. We have not changed in our commitment. …

It is our intention not only to point to the inadequacies of the General Conventions responses, but to declare to our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the Communion that we continue as The Episcopal Church in this country who uphold and propagate the historic faith and order we have come to know through the Anglican heritage of apostolic teaching and biblical faith; who desire to be fully a constituent member of the Anglican Communion; and who are ready to embrace and live under the Windsor Report without equivocation. Accordingly, we repudiate the actions of the General Convention of 2003 which have breached the bonds of affection within the Communion. We bishops have committed to withhold consents for any persons living in same gender relationships who may be put forward for consecration as a bishop of the Church. And we have refused to grant authority for the blessing of sexual relationships outside Christian Marriage in our jurisdictions. We intend to go forward in the Communion confidently and unreservedly.

Our chief concern now is to fulfill our charge as bishops of the Church of God in the Anglican tradition to guard the faith, unity and discipline of the Church. Pastoral care and apostolic teaching must not only be given to our own dioceses, but to all the faithful in this country who seek apostolic oversight and support. We will take counsel together to fulfill our service on behalf of faithful Anglicans in this country, both clergy and laity, and to proclaim the Gospel and build up the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we seek the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates and Bishops of the Anglican Communion as we do so.

Bishops’ Statement – General Convention Actions Inadequate – Anglican Communion Network

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The ‘strong' and the 'weak'

If we Westerners are the ‘strong’, and the South are the ‘weak’, we ought to ‘bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.’ That we bear with them is the only possible sign that we are indeed the mature and the strong.

Even if we sophisticated modern Protestant Westerners are more mature in the faith than all the poor backwards Christians of the Third World, with their patriarchal views of gender and sexuality, they are the gift of God to us (and we to them). God has generously bound them to us. We are, as it were, married – the ‘sophisticated’ to the ‘backward’, the liberal to the fundamentalist.

We cannot decide to make changes in our corner of the Church, because our corner does not belong to us only, but to the whole Church. Unilateral decisions show not only indifference, but antagonism to them. Our salvation consists in our being joined to them in Christ, so separation from them tugs against our salvation.

Do those who want to ‘go forward’ into new, ostensibly more inclusive, forms of church life, really don’t mind if they leave others, traditionalists, Africans and Asians, behind? They want to go a little more quickly, but do they want to leave others behind? But in the wilderness if we do not go at the pace of the very slowest, we will be abandoning the slowest and weakest, so the body will break up and never arrive. The whole point of our time in the wilderness is not to arrive anywhere in particular, but to learn to serve and hold on to one another, the strong serving the weak and waiting for them. Fast finishers don’t get earlier admission, for admission to the land promised to us is only for the whole Church, the strong bound to the weak.

Of course if these other churches are wrong about who may be ordained, we have to tell them so, and if there are churches who belive we are wrong about this, we have to listen to them and examine ourselves. We have to talk to them, and either be corrected by them and return to them, or to correct them and beg them to come back to us. We have to serve them in this way, or be served by them. Our readiness to do is the proper demonstration of our maturity. Any division in the Church makes it hard to pray, but our present acts that widened our separation from the rest of the Church, mean that we must pray and lament.

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Solly on 'The Eschatological Economy'

God is judge. This is an idea that has undergone a metamorphosis in my mind. Too often ‘God is judge’ means he is like those guys in red dispensing retributive justice in our British court system. This was Luther’s apprehension of God before he understood things better, but it is an apprehension that seems to creep easily back into Reformed thought on the ground – and possibly Catholic thought too. God is out to punish sins, so watch out. God is a judge, and a judge gives you what you deserve. Okay, he actually gave Jesus what you deserve, as the doctrine goes, but after that, you had better watch out, cos THEN he will give you what you deserve if you don’t behave. Legalism goes hand in hand with this. Of course, it’s not God’s fault at all but the use humans make of the idea.

This would seem to mitigate against the idea of God as punishing judge rather than saving judge, since Christians can be all to quick to judge others, including their salvific position before God – check any Christian debate forum – and I don’t think that that is what is meant. We need a word that covers action on behalf of those in trouble as well as conveying the thought of discernment. Not that God did not punish, but the glee with which people, including Christians, will cut another off for some transgression, is surely not an imitation of God’s actions. No wonder Jesus said forgive seventy times seven times…Something more is intended. Remember, The Eschatological Economy is about paideia, about God training up a dysfunctional houseful of delinquents and outcasts to be a mature family carrying on their father’s work. Is this also where a renewed Protestant thought touches base with Eastern Christianity and its doctrine of theosis, if one sees such a thing from a vocational angle, rather than just a ‘spiritual’ one?

In addition to writing the world’s longest and most charitable book review, Solly blogs perceptively about Israel and Atonement. Visit Solly Gratia.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

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DiNoia on Christian Humanism 2

The criteria then for thinking about the faith and about the relation of faith to culture are the criteria that come from the classical view of theological inquiry which is to see the intelligibility of what is intrinsically intelligible, naturally using all of the capacities and rigor that human reason supplies. It’s not a question of being unreasonable. Intelligibility is not the opposite of reasonability, but it’s the tool of reason that is applied to the reflection on a mystery that itself draws the human mind and challenges it at every point.

Not everyone coming out of our institutions have to be theologians. But it is the case, and you’ve all experienced this, that the people with highly sophisticated knowledge of economics, politics, physics, astronomy, law are traveling with an almost infantile level of knowledge of their faith. I’ve encountered them. They are traveling on the knowledge of their faith that they might remember from a 3rd grade class, or perhaps at 5th grade with their confirmation. After that they haven’t learned a single thing. This makes them incapable of withstanding not only incorrect versions of Catholicism, but also versions of any kind of spirituality that are mad. The danger of irreligion is not skepticism, but credulity. People are prepared to believe anything in the name of religion, as you know.

This is why Ex Corde Ecclesia is so central, so important, so absolutely essential. Our institutions of higher learning must turn out people who know something about their faith and who are capable of articulating the ways in which it relates to whatever area of professional life, politics, science, philosophy, they are in, because God knows the clergy can’t and are unlikely to do so.

Augustine DiNoia Divine Wisdom and Christian Humanism

Ex Corde Ecclesia is John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic universities. It begins ‘Born from the heart of the Church, a Catholic University is located in that course of tradition which may be traced back to the very origin of the University as an institution…’ . My respect for Ex Corde Ecclesia and Fides et Ratio has grown and grown. When I explained to a ‘Catholic’ educational institution last year why I thought that Ex Corde Ecclesia was binding on it and that this was good news, my relationship with that institution was terminated. These Papal documents have real evangelical power, and our administrators certainly feel the challenge, or threat, these documents represent to the secular agenda.

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Catholicity is not an extra

Catholicity, sometimes also called ecumenism, is not an extra. It is the centre of the gospel. It is an evangelical imperative. Without reconciliation with the rest of the Church, there is no salvation for us. If the Church of England, and its Synod, does not feel the absolute priority of ecumenical reconciliation with all other churches, this is not merely negligence, it is culpable, it is sin. But we may not forget that we are sinners forgiven, and so in humility we must consider these others better than ourselves. We are the bloody-minded, schismatic, divisive ones, now brought by baptism into the Body of Christ and so calmed and reconciled. Our reconciliation, and our reception of our reconciliation, is our being reconciled to all others. But if we are still holding out against other Christian churches, through ignorance or indolence or because we don’t care, we are pushing that the reconciliation and forgiveness away. We are pushing our Lord away, and with him our salvation

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Catholicity means deference to the whole Church

Catholicity means we do not make our own rules. Our Anglican readiness to make new rules about who may be ordained a bishop shows that we have lost touch with the church in any part of the world. Our lack of concern for the rest of the world is a lack of love. Is it really all the same to us if we do kiss goodbye to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church? For Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper is saying that Anglicans and Episcopalians have put the movement we were making towards the unity of the Church into reverse because the started making new rules for Church order. We think we can make new rules, just for ourselves. But we may not make unilateral decisions for our corner of the worldwide church. The Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) is only the Church when it is connected, not just to the United States, but to all the rest of the Church catholic – worldwide, historic and eschatological. In England, the Church of England is only the Church when it is connected to the rest of the Church not in England, and the Anglican church is only the Church by being connected to the non-Anglican Church. Our salvation is our being tied together, our connection, to these others, so that with them we make the whole universal body of Christ. If we loosen our connections to the rest of the Church, it is not just that we float away from the rest of body, but that the whole body starts to break up, and ceases to be that universal community of witness to God. By leaving we threaten the life even of those we leave, never mind what this does to our own life.

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DiNoia on Christian humanism 1

DiNoia

We are not talking about revealing arcane truths in talking about the Trinity, we are talking about love, pouring itself out so that love will be returned. That is what the theology of the Trinity is about. Love will be returned in a way that is mutual, that is, it’s not a matter of simply us loving God, it’s a matter of us, altogether loving God and loving each other in God. This is the divine wisdom we have to proclaim: God wants to share the communion of the Trinitarian life with persons who are not God in Christ and the Holy Spirit.

From the perspective of the Church, this completely defines what it means to be human. That is, in view of that destiny we now understand how immense and magnificent a thing it is to be a human being. Commenting on Vatican II, the message John Paul II has affirmed over and over again to the world stresses that only Christ knows what is in man. We find the vision of what it means to be human only when we take a God’s eye view.

Short of the God’s eye view, we have nothing of the truth of the human person. I’m exaggerating, but we have only a very small core of the truth of what it means to be human. Only when we know that it is possible for human beings to share communion of the Trinitarian life, do we understand what being human is.

Augustine DiNoia Divine Wisdom and Christian Humanism