Author: Douglas Knight

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Divine Sovereignty

God’s sovereignty transcends and stands in judgment on all worldly sovereignties. Because God is God, Caesar is not God and neither are Caesar’s successors, be they kings, presidents, prime ministers, or party general secretaries. And because Caesar and his successors aren’t God, their power is limited, not absolute; in addition to Caesar’s legitimate power, there are other legitimate powers in the world.

So the state cannot be all there is. Long before Enlightenment political theorists began challenging royal absolutism with ideas like Montesquieu’s “separation of powers,” Western civilization learned the idea of “limited government” in the school of Christian reflection. When medieval Catholic thinkers insisted on a sharp distinction between “society” and the “state,” they created a vaccine against absolutism in either its royal or modern (totalitarian) form. The vaccine wasn’t completely effective. But its potency may help explain why the age of absolutism was a rather short one, as these things go in history.
Medieval Catholicism also helped plant in the Western mind the idea that “consent” is crucial to just governance. Government isn’t simply coercion, medieval Catholic political theory insisted; just governance requires consent. Consent would be forthcoming if governance were just. And who would judge the justice of a particular form or style of governance, or the justice of a particular act of state? The Church’s claim to be able to judge princes, and the Catholic teaching that “the people” have an inherent sense of justice within them, injected a crucial idea into the political-cultural subsoil of the West—the idea that “justice” isn’t simply what those in authority say it is. There are moral standards of justice that are independent of governments; we can know those moral standards, and they ought to be applied in public life. All of these ideas, fundamental to democracy, were nurtured in the civilization of the Middle Ages by the Catholic Church.

George Weigel Divine Sovereignty Letters to a Young Catholic

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Serve the Lord with gladness

… and come before his presence with a song (Psalm 100)

In the house of the Lord, slavery is free. It is free because it serves not out of necessity, but out of charity… Charity should make you a servant, just as truth has made you free… you are at once both a servant and free: a servant, because you have become such; free, because you are loved by God your Creator; indeed, you have also been enabled to love your Creator… You are a servant of the Lord and you are a freedman of the Lord. Do not go looking for a liberation which will lead you far from the house of your liberator!

Augustine Enarratio in Psalmum XCIX – Expositions of the Psalms

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Act interdependently, not independently

It is an ancient canonical principle that what touches all should be decided by all. The relational nature of communion requires each church to learn more fully what it means to be part of that communion, so that its members may be fulfilled and strengthened in and through their relations with other churches. Communion obliges each church to foster, respect and maintain all those marks of common identity, and all those instruments of unity and communion, which it shares with fellow churches, seeking a common mind in essential matters of common concern: in short, to act interdependently, not independently.

Windsor Report on the future of the Anglican Communion paragraph 51

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O'Donovan on leadership, dialogue and practical wisdom

Oliver O’Donovan tells us that our leaders have to lead us, form us and allow us to flourish, or even postively to see to it that we flourish. They have to be brave and lead from the front, and make real decisions about what is good for us. They therefore have to have views about what is good, and they have to allow those views to be tested by dialogue with the people they lead. Leaders have to make decisions. They have to exercise practical wisdom, which O’Donovan calls judgment, in order that we are all increasingly able to exercise practical wisdom, and so become mature. Plato represents one major tradition of practical wisdom, but an even more sophisticated tradition of practical wisdom is that of Christian discipleship.

“In Hebrew the most general word for law, torah, meant simply “a decision.” It referred to the “ruling” that a priest would give when consulted. In the same way we say that the judge “declares the law” in relation to a case, meaning not that he quotes from law books, but that he announces a decision; “the law of the case” is simply the generic principle applied in the particular judgment. But since each judgment is not separate and discrete but occurs in the context of an institution, the law of each case is discerned in relation to the law of preceding cases; if it is to be justly proportioned, it cannot be wildly out of line with other decisions. No act of judgment, then, simply invents law de novo; that would defeat the purpose of judging, namely, determining what is proportionate to the law of precedent that stands over and behind the present decision and can be appealed to in support or criticism of it. But a law of precedent requires no distinct human legislator. Divine law, natural or revealed, when mediated through traditions of right innate in the society, is sufficient to allow courts to develop a law by way of their own judgments, a conception which our shared English legal tradition names the “common law.”

The English parliament began life as a court of common pleas, a means by which the governed spoke to the government about their frustrations, an organic line of communication between the two which served to legitimate government as pursuing the common good. The extension of parliament’s role to a deliberative forum, first for the authorizing of taxation and then for the formation of legislation, recognized the need for government to listen to the vox populi, to respect its deeply held convictions, and to take stock of its anxieties.

By converting parliament into a branch of government, modern constitutional theory lost the sense that the dialogue between government and the governed is at the heart of the legislative process. It became a purely intra-governmental dialogue. The sheer success of parliament in taming the willfulness of the monarchy led to an implosion of government and parliament upon each other, leaving an unhealthy mutual dependence.

When a certain dialogue fails to accompany the formation of law, its enactment simply becomes another form of executive action – it loses its distinctive lawlike character. But what we need is not a dialogue between departments of government, but a dialogue between government and people .”

Oliver O’Donovan Government as Judgment since expanded to become The Ways of Judgment.

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Communion and Anglicans

“Communion is, in fact, all about mutual relationships. It is expressed by community, equality, common life, sharing, interdependence, and mutual affection and respect. It subsists in visible unity, common confession of the apostolic faith, common belief in scripture and the creeds, common baptism and shared eucharist, and a mutually recognised common ministry. Communion means that each church recognises that the other belongs to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, and shares in the mission of the whole people of God. It involves practising a common liturgical tradition, and intending to listen, speak and act alongside one another in obedience to the gospel. In communion, each church acknowledges and respects the interdependence and autonomy of the other, putting the needs of the global fellowship before its own. Through such communion, each church is enabled to find completeness through its relations to the others, while fulfilling its own particular calling within its own cultural context.”

Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that marvellous? It is the The Windsor Report on the Anglican Communion – paragraph 49. I had no idea how exciting the Christian faith is, but this Anglican material states it loud and clear – and there is loads more where this came from. Let’s learn this off by heart, let us teach it to our children, let us bind it to our foreheads – ‘each church recognises that the other belongs to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, and shares in the mission of the whole people of God.’ Yup.

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The Christian life is life together

Jesus Christ is the universal man, the summit and definition of what human being is. He is the properly catholic being. Life with him means communion with all mankind. He is now forming us into catholic beings, people who are defined, by participation in him, by fellowship with every other human being. The Christian life – the apprenticeship we serve – opens us out from our present incurved state to bring us into relationship with every other living thing. This means that the Christian life and faith is intrinsically about catholicity, thus ecumenism, the reconciliation of every household and community with every other, is what the gospel is. In the apprenticeship of this Christian life we learn to reach out to the whole of the rest of the Church, indeed to the future completition of the Church, when Christ shall be all in all.

You are only a catholic as you strain towards reconciliation with all other churches, and treat them not only as wayward and sometimes willfully disobedient, who you must mourn and pray for, and mention in your intercessions that precede every eucharist. But you must also treat them as those who have some part of the gospel, and some ‘portion’ of Christ and so as those you must learn from and submit to. Being catholic certainly means being under the authority and Magisterium of the Roman Church, treating its teaching with respect and being formed by it. But you must also be under the authority of every other part of the church (no matter how abusive that authority sometimes is), and everywhere look for Christ and ask to be renewed and reformed by him.

I am not a Roman Catholic, but an Anglican, a Reformed Anglican (‘catholic evangelical’ for convenience). The term ‘reformed’ can only refer to the catholic church and so to the determination together that the Church must repent and be disciplined, reformed and renewed by Christ its head. But I think it is right always to wonder whether I should be more ‘Roman’, whether I should convert to ‘Roman Catholic’. Of course this is not a comfortable place to be. Of course this means many contradictions. You may change my mind on this. Of course.

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Why I wrote 'The Eschatological Economy' 1 – Sacrifice

Here is the first of a series of posts on why I wrote The Eschatological Economy. I will start with atonement, move on to the doctrine of election and the people of God, and to the issue of time. Later on I will talk a bit about practices, bodies and the distinctive Christian life and then talk a bit about modernity and the non-Christian way of life. Since these are all interrelated there will be some repetition, but I hope you will not mind that.

The Eschatological Economy

The Eschatological Economy started because I wanted to know why the concept of sacrifice had become so alien to us, and whether sacrifice really is as wrong or incomprehensible as many believed. My own professor, Colin Gunton, had restated the place of sacrifice in theology of the atonement. In ‘The Actuality of Atonement’ he argued that some very traditional and unfashionable atonement models, such as the Christus Victor model, the concept of sacrifice, and Anselm’s account, still made good sense. But Colin Gunton was able to make only limited sense of sacrifice. He used to quote Hebrews ‘the blood of bulls does not take away sin’ at me and insisted that we moderns no longer practice sacrifice. I tied to convince him that we moderns sacrifice too. We don’t sacrifice sheep in the public square, but we do rear and butcher animals, and the way we surround this process with (industrial, commercial) ritual and keep it is as far out of the public eye as possible is equally strange and even (in a non-Christian sense) religious. It is not crazy to say we sacrifice people, or that other people are involuntarily sacrificed – expended – for us. The economic levers and gears that provide us with our standard of living may be doing so by grinding the faces of the poor, and if we deny that this could be the case, that our comfort is at the cost of their sacrifice, we may be living in denial. So I think we are mistaken if we think that sacrifice and ritual took place in the ancient world but don’t any longer – because this makes much ancient Christian teaching – most of Hebrews, for instance – difficult to understand.

See The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

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Theology redefines religion

Modernity identifies religion as separate from ethics, the discussion of ends. It supposes that we all know what end has been agreed upon, and have now only to concern ourselves with how to get there, and so with comparing one means with another. The modern concept of religion belongs to this idea that there is one single end and all talk is only about how, not about what. Theology should refuse this definition and identify religion as talk about ends, assume open discourse about what the ends are, and insist that there is no meta-discourse that can settle this for us. Then we can say that religion is a matter of the good performance of talk about ends. It is not to be reduced to reaching agreement so that talk can stop, but it aims at getting better at the give-and-take of converse, so the talk can grow, become a good of its own and open space for other goods to emerge. Our talk is then both preparation for, and already good performance of, life in common.

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Theological institutions and excellence

The International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family has three aims, four pillars and seven principles. It is not only their numerical neatness that I approve of.

Here are the three aims:

1. To provide studies in Theology as well as specialized theological studies on marriage and the family;
2. To form by such studies those who are preparing themselves for tasks in the various areas of the Churchâ??s life, especially in the area of marriage and the family;
3. To organize seminars, symposia and conferences as an aid to the local Churches and to the Holy See in promoting an authentic vision of marriage and family life.

The four pillars

1. The first pillar is the founding intention of Pope John Paul II. ITI was founded for the study of Catholic theology as a unified whole within which particular attention is devoted to the theme of marriage and the family. A solid theological formation is needed for Catholic leaders, lay and clergy, to achieve critical judgment in our culture and the capacity to contribute to the new evangelization, which is especially needed in the area of marriage and the family.

2. The second pillar of ITI, also part of John Paul IIâ??s founding vision, is its international character, its bridge function between East and West. About 50% of the students come from Central and Eastern Europe (the majority of them are Greek Catholic), others come from Western Europe and the Americas. This international character allows a genuine experience of the universal Church, which must â??breathe with both lungsâ?? (John Paul II) East and West.

3. The third pillar of ITI is its pedagogy, which consists in studying the original writings of the great Masters of Theology, in addition to Sacred Scripture, esp. the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church. Contact with original texts develops an eye for quality, especially in theology. The great masters lead faculty and students most directly to the realities discussed in theology, above all God himself. This pedagogy also develops the virtues of active reading, attentive discussion and penetrating understanding.

4. The fourth pillar of ITI is a rich Catholic community that lives and prays together in the same place and its close vicinity. The example of the Christian family life lived by many among the faculty and students offers the most persuasive and practically helpful evidence of the beauty and practicability of that life. It also encourages the formation of religious and priestly vocations and their blossoming.

But the Seven Principles are the knock-out.

The Word of God as Center
As the inspired Word of God, Scripture, as the Church receives it, stands at the center of the curriculum. All other courses are ordered to unfolding its meaning.

Ad Fontes, East and West
The Curriculum has its point of departure in the primary sources written by the great masters of the theological tradition, from the Fathers of the Church to the present age. It draws on the theological tradition of the East as well as of the West, seeking in this way to â??breathe with both lungs of the Church.â?? The Greek Fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas are particularly important points of reference.

Pedagogy
Teachers and students actively collaborate in pursuing the understanding of the Churchâ??s faith through the reading and guided discussion of the masters. Care is taken that students truly prepare the texts and that sufficient room is given to student participation to develop the virtues of active and responsible reading and thinking.

Theology in its Unity
Foregoing premature specialization, the Curriculum seeks to unfold theology out of its inner unity, in conformity with its essence as a scientific reflection of the faith of the Church. The Curriculum is ordered around the central mysteries of the faith: the Trinity, the Incarnation, grace, justification, the Church, etc. All particular questions are addressed in the light of these central mysteries.

Theological Rationale
The rationale of studies at ITI is theological throughout. Both the sequence of semesters and the composition of courses in each semester are shaped in accord with the above mentioned unity to allow for a systematic building up of the parts of theology. When questions usually classified with other fields (philosophy, psychology, sociology) are discussed, they are discussed for the sake of theology and in an order required by theology.

Primacy of the Theological Question
Historical-critical investigations are a necessary aspect of the study of sources. Such investigations, however, find their inner completion only in the properly theological question, “What is the truth of the matter?â??

Above All, Charity
Theology stands under the rule of the new commandment and exists for the sake of union with the One whose love for us we come more deeply to understand. It is therefore studied and taught at the heart of his Church.

I will be plagiarizing these principles in their entirety from now on.