Author: Douglas Knight

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To defend reason

As pope, Benedict XVI doesnâ??t give an inch to the preconceptions that were formed about him as a cardinal. He doesnâ??t thunder condemnations, he doesnâ??t hurl anathemas. He reasons staunchly, but serenely. His criticisms against modernity or against the â??pathologiesâ?? that he sees even within the Church are fully elaborated. That is part of the reason why he has practically silenced Catholic progressivism: not because this has turned friendly toward him, but because it is not able to reply to him with arguments of similar persuasive powerâ?¦.

It isnâ??t a stretch to say that Ratzinger is a herald of the Enlightenment, because he himself has declared that he wants to take up the defense of Enlightenment principles in an age in which few remain to defend reason. Those who expected to find in the former head of the former Holy Office a fideist paladin of dogma have been given their just deserts. For him, it is not only Jerusalem, but it is also the Athens of the Greek philosophers that is at the origin of the Christian faith.

Benedict XVI is not afraid of leveling severe criticism against the religions, beginning with Christianity, precisely in the name of reason. He wants a mutual relationship of oversight and purification to be established between reason and religion. He dedicated two thirds of his lecture in Regensburg to criticizing the phases in which Christianity detached itself from its rational foundations.

Sandro Magister Habemas Papam

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Multicultural liberality – or secular fundamentalism?

A very good spiel from the Archbishop. I think the matter needs to be pressed a little harder though.

We have a secular liberal ideology; forms of evangelical Christianity; forms of traditional Christianity (which themselves subdivide into smaller, usually acquiescent groups); and we have forms of Islam. These different groups have co-existed in our de facto multicultural society governed by norms of political liberality (with virtues of tolerance, respect, distance from those who are different such that you don’t invade their own cultural space with your ideas, etc.).

Now, what the incidents with the college Christian Unions represent, I think, is the beginning of the end of this liberal multiculturalism. And the irony is that the problem is not really with the Muslims (who are usually the ones pilloried as being the problem case). The real problem – and the biggest threat to our British ways of life – are the secular liberals.

For the secular liberals (as is reflected in their name) deliberately misrepresent themselves within the framework of multicultural British life. De facto, they remain one ‘community’ (perhaps ‘interest group’ is better) within British society, with their own values and agenda. However, they present themselves as the guardians of political liberality itself, which is to say, as the guardians of the social-legal fabric which constitutes the structure of our multicultural society itself. And what they are doing – whilst pretending to defend our multiculturalism – is in fact forcing the values of their community/interest group onto British society as a whole. Thereby forcing other people and other groups to accept (at least in public), not a standpoint of political multicultural liberality and respect, but instead the values of secular liberalism.

This, it seems to me, is what is at stake in the issue over the CUs. The right to meet in a particular public context as a public group is being denied them by secular liberals who – when they have power – will not allow communities which do not share their values to meet together as a publically recognised body.

Whilst pretending to safeguard multicultural liberality, they in fact impose their own form of secular liberalism. Essentially their argument is: ‘You are being unjustly descriminatory unless you accept our values; since you don’t accept our values, we do not permit you to exist as a public body.’

Now, let’s face it, hard-line Muslims are not going to be writing public policy; nor are they going to be voting on its acceptance in the House of Commons. But already, and over the coming years, secular liberals, with exactly the same attitudes as displayed by the student politicians who have outlawed CUs will be forming and passing public policy in Government. This is the biggest threat to our British ways of life, and its beginnings are seen quite clearly with the controversies over the CUs.

Alan Brown

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The call to communion springs from the reality of the body of Christ

The question of how, with whom, and to what end the Church makes decisions is not a secondary one; it gets to the core of the Gospel (not the only thing that does this, of course; but still it is an essential). Bp. Wrightâ??s vehemence is understandable, whether well or poorly expressed: he feels as if those with whom he has shared faith and ministry â?? â??my companion, my own familiar friend, with whom we took sweet counselâ?? (Ps. 55:14f.) â?? are now working to undermine the very vows of pastoral oversight to which he was asked to subject himself, and within which he has labored. He is a bishop for the whole church, after all. Something we have tried hard, with little effect, to tell TEC bishops. But that is part of his point: you canâ??t have it both ways, calling people to the accountability of the whole church, and then throwing that wholeness out when it doesnâ??t suit you.

â??Congregationalismâ?? does indeed bother many of us and deeply. There are, after all, real reasons why many of us are not â??free churchâ?? evangelicals; it is a conscious choice, in fact, since most free-church evangelicals are a lot better at hosting bible studies, mission outreach, church growth, and the rest than are evangelical Anglicans, and if those were our priorities before all else, we would certainly be in the wrong place. â??Communion orderâ??, however, is something we believe is biblical, Christ-called, and therefore a primary imperative. It is not something way down the totem pole on the list of â??nice things to do if you have the timeâ??. The call to communion â?? and the disciplines involved, which include the ordering of the Church life in common counsel, honesty, and mutual accountability, rather than simply declaring independence when things get rough â?? springs from the reality of the Body of Christ, and hence it is bound up with the essential doctrines of the Son of God. It is in this light that Paul writes what he does in Philippians 2:1-18, where â??being of the same mind, having the same love, and being in full accord and of one mindâ?? are images of the God who became the servant of those who are weak, disobedient, and dying, that we might exalt him as our Lord, and ourselves, in following His way and being transformed in His Spirit, may act as â??lightsâ?? in a perverse world. The forces pressing Anglicans into congregationalism are ones pressing Anglicans into a contradiction of the Apostleâ??s desire and command, and into a drifting away from Christ Jesus himself. So I believe, at any rate.

It continues to astonish me that so many conservative Anglicans think that their witness is so weak and so unsupported by Godâ??s promises that continued, ordered, and loving efforts at discerning and embodying â??one-mindednessâ?? in Christ with those who are in error, are leading people to hell. I suppose there is no guarantee that such engagement will not do damage; but there is just as good (better to my mind) reason to believe that the whole-scale throwing over of our common commitments to an ordered life in Communion is producing scandals that are ruining the faith of Christâ??s â??little onesâ??. I know of no conservative congregation that has scandalized the faithful by preaching, teaching, and witnessing faithfully, even within the Episcopal Church, or even more certainly, within the Church of England. There are good reasons people might give to leave TEC at this time, to be sure; but they tend either to be based on a firm conviction that Anglicanism itself (and not just TEC) is a failed ecclesial experiment, or on the personal and particular levels at which conflict can be tolerated. I do not consider â??Scriptural faithfulnessâ??, which Wright properly sees to be a wax nose in these kinds of polemics, to be such a reason, since in its substantive sense such faithfulness can be upheld even in the lionâ??s den.

Ephraim Radner – comment to Bishop Tom Wright’s ‘A Confused Covenant’ Titus 1.9

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Don't pretend it's Anglican

Bishop Tom Wright responds to ‘A Covenant for the Church of England’, issued by Paul Perkin and Chris Sugden and others

So to ‘action’. This is divided into five areas: mission, appointments, fellowship, money and oversight. I am delighted that this document begins with mission; one of the great gains of the last decade has been to shift the whole church into a mission focus. But the six points made under ‘mission’ seem scatty and uneven, and turn out not to be about mission as such – indeed, it has nothing creative to say about mission at all, and appears to lack any engagement with the fresh and lively thinking on the subject that has gone on in the last decade or two – but about the politics of a ‘mission’ which wants to clone certain types of churches at the cost, if necessary, of driving a coach and horses through normal Anglican life. The first point, quoting the ‘great commission’, is fine so far as it goes, though what sort of renewed force it has in our post-Christian society is not explored. If it had been, quite different things might have emerged. Instead, we are projected at once into what appears to be the real agenda of the whole document: a break away from any normal ecclesial practice and into a free-for-all. This is justified by the claim that ‘as is being increasingly recognized [by whom, we might ask?], the historic focus [clergy, buildings, etc]…is now inadequate by itself…etc’ – in other words, we can’t do what we want in the existing structures so we shall go elsewhere. The third point, which is put in quotation marks though without a reference (‘Existing ecclesiastical legal boundaries should be seen as permeable’) is not, in this context, a way of saying ‘we are working within the framework of Mission-Shaped Church, but is rather, in this context, a way of saying, ‘we intend to plant churches wherever we like and claim that they are Anglican’. This becomes clear in the fourth point: ‘there cannot be any no-go areas for gospel growth and church planting’. Here, I’m afraid – and this is not a cynical interpretation, but the reflection of a reality I have witnessed – ‘gospel growth’ means ‘the spread of our particular type of church’. The attempt to hook this agenda back into the official parlance of the contemporary church (‘we will support mission-shaped expressions of church…’) is disingenuous, as becomes clear in the final clause, ‘even when official permission is unreasonably withheld.’ The report in question was quite clear that mission-shaped church doesn’t mean ‘churches which do their own thing and cock a snook at any bishop who questions them’. But that, alas, has sometimes been the reality.

But the real shocker is the next section, ‘Appointments’. This begins with a breathtaking statement of congregationalism: ‘The local congregation is the initial and key seed-bed for recognizing, authorizing, raising up and releasing new leaders.’ Recognising, perhaps. Raising up, quite possibly. Authorizing? Not within any recognizable Anglican polity. The authors should read Article 23 once more: ‘It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.’ The rest of the Articles make it clear that ‘Congregation’ here cannot mean ‘the local church, doing its own thing’. The following sentences (points 2-6) concede that wider recognition and authorization are needed, but say, in effect, ‘since we don’t trust the church to select, train and ordain, we’ll do it ourselves.’ Fine, if that’s what you want to do; don’t pretend it’s Anglican, and don’t be surprised when Anglicans, including a great many evangelicals, regard you as radically out of line. It is no surprise, reading the seventh point (‘If the local Bishop unreasonably withholds authorization, we will pay for, train and commission the ministers that are needed, and seek official Anglican recognition for them’), that the two principal authors of this report were present and supportive at the irregular ordinations – with a bishop from the ‘Church of England in South Africa’, a body with whom the Church of England is not in communion – which took place in the Southwark diocese a year or so ago. Basically, this section is a way of declaring UDI and must be seen as such. Is that really what the constituency of CEEC and the other relevant bodies want? Have they reflected on the consequences of such a move – not least for those of us who don’t live in the affluent parts of the country where ‘we will pay for this’ is a cheerful, sometimes even arrogant, statement of social status?

Bishop Tom Wright A Confused ‘Covenant’

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Catholicity 9

So far I have said that, in the church, we already participate in that future complete assembly, which is the whole body of Christ. In this future body we will be relationship with all, and they will all participate in us. We will belong, not any smaller or lesser group, but to the whole, the universal or catholic entity of Christ. We are not complete, and not ourselves without them, and they are not complete without us. We will not be raised from the dead without them: they are essential to our final identity: in the resurrection body, the universal, catholic, body, when Christ is all in all, all will be in all. This means that we may now know Christ only with all whom the Father has given him. Christ prepares now them for us, and us for them.

All these people have received from Christ a piece of the future creation, and in this future creation they have also received a little bit of us. They have a piece of our own true selves that we do not yet have. They have to teach this new aspect of our proper identity to us, and we have to receive it from them. They have to give this piece to us, and we have to receive it from them, and must wait until they do. We receive ourselves only from them. This means that we must want to receive this from them: it requires that we are open and willing to receive them, and so to receive Christ, and our own identity, freely. Love makes us free to receive them. Only when we take it from them (and have learned how to do this) are we really and freely ourselves.

Christ meets us. But that meeting involve us in a search in which we look everywhere for him, even in that company that we consider ungodly. We find him where he, in his freedom, meets us. He meets us in the form of that very set of persons against whom we had most recently and most fervently been defending ourselves. Christ is there – only – for us, in the person we were trying to avoid. Christ is there at that moment turning this rival into our friend. We cannot turn away from them without turning away from the piece of ourselves that they, and only they, have to give us. We cannot turn away from them without turning away both our Lord, and our own future. We have to go the Christians we don’t like, whose doctrine and churchmanship are repellant to us, in order to meet Christ.

This means that ‘ecumenism’ is an event of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness. The eucharist is the ecumenical event. Though an unlovely word, ‘ecumenical’ simply means communion. This communion comes through being reconciled with those who oppose us. Of course this reconciliation cannot come at the expense of truth, so ‘there must differences among you’ and forthright exchanges of view. But we must be reconciled with those who oppose us, and that most often means from those at opposite ends of the church, the ‘evangelicals’ or the ‘catholics’ or whoever’s churchmanship you regard as least acceptable.

We meet Christ in the event in which our opponent becomes our brother. We have to put into words what we hold against him, and we have to forgive him and ask him for his forgiveness. Every time we meet, we must look forward to and pray for this reconciliation and unity.

See previous ‘Catholicity’ posts

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It looks like a fear of open argument

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has defended the rights of university Christian Unions, saying that Student Union bodies should not discriminate against them simply because they donâ??t approve of their views.

“The danger in issuing sanctions against a body whose views you disapprove of is that it looks like a fear of open argument. If disagreement is to be silenced because offence may be caused, that is not good for intellectual life; it personalises and â??psychologisesâ?? all conflict of ideas and denies the possibility of appropriate detachment in debating issues.”

Writing in an article in the Times Higher Educational Supplement, to be published today [Friday 8th December 2006], Dr Williams says that the judgement that religious views ought to banned because they may cause some kind of offence damages the culture of free exchange on which so much in a university depends:

â??A good institution of HE is one in which students learn that their questions are not everyoneâ??s questions, and their answers are not everyoneâ??s answers. Simply in the fact of being alongside people who are following other academic disciplines, you learn that different people want to know different sorts of thing. You learn that your world is not the obviously right and true one just because you say it is. Whatever convictions you emerge with will have been tested by this critical exposure to other ways of seeing and other sorts of investigation.â??

Student Unions had to consider, he argued, whether their essential role was brokering between different communities from which they drew their membership, or whether they were to function in a central licensing capacity:

â??â?¦ the question that ought to be asked is what those student unions that have sought to withdraw recognition from Christian Unions think their powers are; do they see themselves as â??brokeringâ?? the business of a wide variety of bodies, many of whose views they (naturally) do not endorse? Or do they think of themselves as representing a central authority that can create or abolish associations?”

Christian Unions, he said, certainly had their own questions to answer:

â?? â?¦ some CUâ??s might do well to undertake a little hard self-examination about whether their language is vulnerable to proper challenge; they may need to affirm more clearly and credibly the distinction between declaring behaviour unacceptable and effectively passing judgement on a whole category of persons. But that does not alter the fundamental point about freedom of association. The integrity of the whole educational process in a democracy depends on getting this right, and it should not be obscured by hasty and superficial reactions to what are regarded as unacceptable opinions by the fashion of the day.”

Archbishop Rowan Williams Christian Unions should be defended

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Prayer is hope in action

In the Church, the institution is not merely an external structure while the Gospel is purely spiritual. In fact, the Gospel and the Institution are inseparable because the Gospel has a body, the Lord has a body in this time of ours. Consequently, issues that seem at first sight merely institutional are actually theological and central, because it is a matter of the realization and concretization of the Gospel in our time…

I remember, when I used go to Germany in the 1980s and ’90s, that I was asked to give interviews and I always knew the questions in advance. They concerned the ordination of women, contraception, abortion and other such constantly recurring problems.

If we let ourselves be drawn into these discussions, the Church is then identified with certain commandments or prohibitions; we give the impression that we are moralists with a few somewhat antiquated convictions, and not even a hint of the true greatness of the faith appears. I therefore consider it essential always to highlight the greatness of our faith — a commitment from which we must not allow such situations to divert us…

Augustine repeatedly emphasized the two sides of the Christian concept of God: God is Logos and God is Love — to the point that he completely humbled himself, assuming a human body and finally, giving himself into our hands as bread. We must always keep in mind and help others to keep in mind these two aspects of the Christian conception of God.

God is “Spiritus Creator”, he is Logos, he is reason. And this is why our faith is something that has to do with reason, can be passed on through reason and has no cause to hide from reason, not even from the reason of our age. But precisely this eternal, immeasurable reason is not merely a mathematics of the universe and far less, some first cause that withdrew after producing the Big Bang.

This reason, on the contrary, has a heart such as to be able to renounce its own immensity and take flesh. And in that alone, to my mind, lies the ultimate, true greatness of our conception of God. We know that God is not a philosophical hypothesis, he is not something that perhaps exists, but we know him and he knows us. And we can know him better and better if we keep up a dialogue with him.

This is why it is a fundamental task of pastoral care to teach people how to pray and how to learn to do so personally, better and better…

And from this viewpoint one perceives, in my opinion, the significance of the Liturgy also as precisely a school of prayer, where the Lord himself teaches us to pray and where we pray together with the Church, both in humble, simple celebrations with only a few of the faithful and also in the feast of faith.

In St Thomas Aquinas’ last work that remained unfinished, the Compendium Theologiae which he intended to structure simply according to the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, the great Doctor began and partly developed his chapter on hope. In it he identified, so to speak, hope with prayer: the chapter on hope is at the same time the chapter on prayer.

I think that this is the great task we have before us: on the one hand, not to make Christianity seem merely morality, but rather a gift in which we are given the love that sustains us and provides us with the strength we need to be able to “lose our own life”. On the other hand, in this context of freely given love, we need to move forward towards ways of putting it into practice, whose foundation is always offered to us by the Decalogue, which we must interpret today with Christ and with the Church in a progressive and new way.

Pope Benedict with the bishops of Switzerland Prayer is hope in action

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The hunt for theology in the UK

Second Aquinas Colloquium – Blackfriars Oxford

We are pleased to reveal that the principal speaker at the 2nd annual colloquium on St Thomas will be Professor John O’Callaghan, Director of Maritain Centre at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. O’Callaghan, author of Thomist realism and the linguistic turn (2003) will be reflecting on the concept of the soul in Aquinas.

He will be joined by two further speakers, Fr Fergus Kerr OP, Director of the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars, and Fr Vivian Boland OP, lecturer at Blackfriars and Strawberry Hill.

Fergus Kerr will be looking at what St Augustine, St Thomas, and Wittgenstein say about our knowledge of other people’s thoughts.

Vivian Boland will be reflecting on virtue ethics in St Thomas.

Here is the punch-line:

Attendance at the colloquium is by invitation only.

Enough said?

The hunt goes on. Exciting isn’t it?

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That transforming fact

‘He comes the prisoners to release, In Satan’s bondage held.’ These are words from one of my favourite Advent hymns, ‘Hark the glad sound!’ And they draw our minds towards an aspect of Christmas that is often neglected because we prefer some of the ‘softer’ elements in the story.

Jesus of Nazareth was born, lived, died and rose because human beings were not free. Since the dawn of human history, men and women had been trapped – even the very best of them – by the heritage of suspicion and alienation towards God and fear of each other. They had been caught up in the great rebellion against God that began even before human history, the revolt of God’s creatures against God out of pride and self-assertion. Satan, the fallen angel, stands as a sign of this primordial tragedy, showing that even the most highly endowed being can be corrupted by self-assertion. All of the intelligence and spiritual dignity belonging to the angels did not stop Lucifer from the ultimate madness of rejecting the God in whose presence he stood.

And this corruption of intelligence and dignity spreads like an epidemic through the universe. We know and sense that we are living in something less than truth or justice, but don’t know how to get out of the trap. The birth and life of Jesus don’t first of all change our ideas – they change what’s actually possible for us. They set us free.

They set us free by re-establishing our dignity on a new footing. Because God himself, God the Son, has taken our human nature to be his, every human being is touched by that transforming fact. The epidemic of rebellion is countered by something almost like a benign ‘infection’, the touch of God communicated to human nature. We still have to choose to co-operate with God – but he has opened the door for us first by re-creating human nature in Jesus Christ.

Archbishop Rowan Williams Christmas message to the Anglican Communion

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Lessons in Democracy

Tocqueville viewed democracy not only as a political regime, but, above all, as an intellectual regime that shapes a societyâ??s customs in general, thereby giving it a sociological and psychological dimension. Democratic regimes, Tocqueville argued, determine our thoughts, desires, and passions. Just as there was Renaissance man and, in the twentieth century, homo sovieticus, â??democratic manâ?? is a form of human being.

For Tocqueville, democracyâ??s systemic effects could lead citizens to deprive themselves of reasoned thought. They could only pretend to judge events and values on their own; in reality, they would merely copy the rough and simplified opinions of the masses. Indeed, what Tocqueville called the hold of â??social powerâ?? on opinion is probably strongest in democratic regimes â?? a view that foretells the growth of modern-day demagogy and media manipulation.

Tocqueville believed that there are no effective long-term constraints on this tendency. Neither local democracy nor small societies, neither governmental checks and balances nor civil rights, can prevent the decline of critical thought that democracy seems to cause. Schools have the power to be little more than enclaves from the corrosive strength of social influences on how the mind works. Similarly, while Tocqueville thought that pursuing virtue as the ancients did, or having a religious faith, could sometimes elevate the soul, both conflict with the democratic ideal if they become officially prescribed in public life.

In this sense, Tocquevilleâ??s intellectual heirs include the neo-Marxist theorists of the Frankfurt School, as well as Hannah Arendt, all of whom feared above all the disintegration of reason in modern societies. Indeed, the French philosopher Marcel Gauchet entitled a recent book Democracy Against Itself. The democratic way of life, these writers argue, tends to destroy original thought and to suppress â??highâ?? culture, yielding a mediocrity that leaves citizens vulnerable to democracyâ??s enemies.

But, while history is replete with murderous regimes applauded by cowed and deceived masses, the greater risk for democratic nations is that their citizens withdraw into apathy and short-term thinking for immediate gratification. The past â?? despite rituals that seek to commemorate historic moments â?? is obliterated by an addiction to the now and the new. Even the supposedly well-educated ruling class is subject to this bewitchment. The essential problem of the democratic mind is its lack of historical consciousness.

Do the defects of democracy really mean, as Tocqueville claimed, that resigned pessimism is the only â?? realistic but unsustainable â?? path open to us? I donâ??t think so. There are means to fight against what might be called todayâ??s growing â??democratic stupidity.â??

The first defense is to push for an educational system that really forms critical minds, namely through the (nowadays) largely neglected subjects of literature, history, and philosophy. If the informed and critical citizenry that democracy requires is to be formed, our schools must stop pandering to the latest popular fads and begin to sharpen the analytical capacities of students.

The biggest impediment to such an education are the mass media, with its tendency to cultivate superficiality and amusement. Many people nowadays spend more of their lives watching television than they do in classrooms. The passivity that mass media encourages is the polar opposite of the active engagement that democratic citizens need. But it is hard to imagine that the mass media (other than quality newspapers) would, of their own volition, become instruments of an education that enhances citizensâ?? critical capacities.

This concern about mass media is no mere elitist scorn for popular culture. The question is not one of popularity alone â?? after all, Mozart was popular in his day, and Shakespeareâ??s plays attracted the poor as well as the rich â?? but of mass cultureâ??s refusal to challenge and provoke. The result of the failure is a generalized indifference and passivity in audiences.

Indeed, for a long time a globalized media culture, one unable to inspire the capacity for critical thought or create elevated feelings, has been on the rise. It is a culture that, through its carelessness, threatens democratic freedom because it fails to create any sense of obligation â?? to society, to history, to community.

Is it too late to do anything about a culture that so deadens the spirit? Tocqueville despised the elites of his time for their complacency in the face of the deracinating force of mass democracy. Will the myopia of our leaders also serve as an agent of his disquieting prophecy?

Nicolas Tenzer Tocquevilleâ??s Lessons in Democracy

So now, you Christians, you may understand why you have been taught a different lesson, and have to teach it.