Ever since I became aware of the meaning of Liturgy and the progression of the liturgical year, Advent has been one of my favorite seasons. The readings contain some of the more majestic passages of the scriptures, the music, the poetry and the theology are impressive. But as I thought about it, I was struck by the many contrasts of Advent.
There is the contrast that in the world around us, Christmas is in full swing while we in the church with purple vestments keep a season of penitence and preparation. The readings for Advent, too, abound in contrasts. The theme of future judgement is prominent, with images of earthquakes and apocalyptic flames; but at the same time, our attention is directed to the way we live our lives day by day, and judgement is seen more as a process than a future apocalyptic happening.
But perhaps the biggest contrast of all, and the one I want us to reflect on for a while this morning, is between settled traditions of the past and the uncertainties of the future. Advent is part of a magnificent, established round of liturgical worship. For me it brings with it remembered years, and echoing strains of "Come, O come Emmanuel" sung by a superb choir in a vast gothic cathedral, and it has about it an emotional tone of continuity and certainty which is linked in feeling and memory to Christmas. Advent looks in two directions. It gathers up all the longings of the People of Israel for the coming of their Messiah and in that it is a preparation for our celebration of the advent, the coming, of the Messiah child in Bethlehem. More insistently, though, it looks to the future, to the final coming of God’s rule, and in this way, the message of Advent points up the uncertainty of social conventions and institutions that look as though they are set for ever in stone.
Without doubt, the readings for today direct out attention to the future aspect of Advent:
The Old Testament sees history as a finite process, a flow of events and people which has a beginning in the creative act of God, and moves to an End. All this is summed up in the Book of Revelation, "I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, who was and who is to come, the sovereign Lord of all." (Apoc. 1.8)
Many pictures of the end suggest great trials and terror, but they also assure the Christian community that if it is faithful all will, in the end be well. Paul, writing to the Christians in Thessalonika expects the end very soon, but he writes in a tone of confidence and counsels the community to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all” (I Thess. 3.12).
The same contrast of terror and trust is clear in the gospel passage from Luke. “People will faint from fear and foreboding”, but to the faithful community he says, “stand up, and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near. (Lk. 21.29).
Yet another contrast is between our theological positions which take for granted this future aspect of Advent, and our real feelings on the matter. It is one thing to long for the end and the establishment of God’s rule, it is quite another to live one’s life with the conviction that all our cherished institutions are transitory and passing away, even if they are not actually evil. After all, if one has a carefully worked out scheme of things, an organized religion, a clear code of law which tells you what to do and what not to do, do we really want a new heaven and a new earth which put in place an a totally God-centered rule a bring us into an open vision of God? Perhaps it is better to have God at a very safe distance. Later Judaism would not allow Yahweh, the name of God to be spoken, replacing it with surrogates like, “The Holy One” or “the Heavens”. In the Christian tradition we are not afraid to say “Yahweh”, but it may be that our theological schemata have made God into a safe abstraction, carefully enclosed in the Nicene Creed.
So, perhaps it is safer to stay with the order one knows; perhaps we are content to enjoy the poetry and music, and to treat this season of Advent as the preparation for the certainty of the Christmas message with its overtones of general good will and family reunions.
This would be fine except for the fact that it really isn't like that. As we are reminded again and a gain, much more than half the world cannot look forward to the joys of family reunions, warm fires and piles of presents. It is precisely the function of the Advent message to direct our thoughts to the future judgement of God, but also to keep us focused on the here and now. That is what Paul does when he urges the Thessalonians to continue and increase in love as they wait for the end. The paradox is that the One who is to come already stands in our midst; not only stands, but lies bleeding from snipers bullets in too many places in the world, lies emaciated with starvation in many parts of East Africa, and is rejected by society in our own culture.
Jesus tells us that we are in some sense to see him in each of his children. That, if you recall, is the central idea of the parable of the sheep and the goats. The parable tells of the time “when the Son of Man comes in his glory”, sits in judgement and separates the sheep and the goats. Jesus says to them "Anything you did (or did not do)for one of my brothers or sisters here, however humble, you did (or did not do) for me." (Mt. 25). This is to say, that Jesus meets us in a myriad of unexpected ways. It is to say that we cannot have the kind of solid, unchangeable certainties that a fixed religious system may give us so that all our inter-personal transactions can totted up on a calculator, and we can make sure that we keep our heavenly account in balance, or even with a bit of credit.
The Jesus who stands among us is greater than the Law and the Prophets, and makes more radical demands than the law calling us to move out of the certainties of our comfortable traditions. Might it be that the two-sided nature of Advent calls us to re-evaluate our attitudes as Christians to the kind of unbridled capitalism that floods over us at this time of year? We need to consider that this One who stands among us and is to come in judgement had some hard things to say. We must resist the temptation to sentimentalize his message. He makes immense demands; he says that he will bring division to households; he suggests that our every-day actions are to be judged by the way we treat others. This is the message of Advent. It bids us question our comfortable assumptions, particularly our religious ones, but reminds us that the Judgement of God is not some far off event that is no immediate concern; it is rather ever-present process that was initiated by the birth of that child in Bethlehem.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Sermon for Thanksgiving Day
A Somewhat Unconventional One
I have to confess that when I began preparation for this sermon I had somewhat hazy ideas about the evolution of the American national holiday of Thanksgiving, but I could never have ended a piece on the history of Thanksgiving that I found on a Web site with the resounding words: “Thanks to the Pilgrims, we have greater freedom in religion & government today”. As so often happens, a persecuted minority became persecutors almost as soon as they established authority over others, and the idea that the Puritans promoted “freedom of religion” is, to say the least, ludicrous.
Outside the Covenant
Innumerable ironies emerge as one considers the idealized version of that first Thanksgiving. That it was the harvest festival of the old England transplanted to New England and lasted three days seems historically accurate. The first irony is that it was made possible by the Indians whose land the new settlers had (to put it delicately) acquired. It was the Indians who taught these largely middles class, extremely narrow-minded academics how to farm in the new world. My historian wife gave me some details I didn’t know: the Separatists would not have made it through the first winter without substantial aid from the Indians; they would not have managed as farmers without significant help, for example, the practice of planting maize (corn) with a few small fish to act as fertilizer; they relied on help, too, to identify native plants that were edible and not dangerous. In spite of all this, it was not long before the majority asserted the very kind of theology that had made them such a pain in England. Indians were heathen, not part of the covenant and certainly not be included among the Saints who had come to found a “city set on the hill”, the New Jerusalem.
Still With Us
And a second irony is that while this early exclusivism did not by any means become the dominant element of the new nation, it has repeatedly re-appeared in our national life. The attempts of the Evangelical Christian Right have many echoes of the Pilgrim Fathers’ attitudes: rigid control of private and familial behavior; devaluation of other faiths; interpreting misfortune and sickness as divine judgment are but a few of the traits that indicate the parentage of the contemporary Religious right. However, the myth of the brave founders marched on: George Washington declared a national thanksgiving in 1789, though many opposed to it, thinking hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national thanksgiving, and, of course, Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea. Still, finally, in 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the final Thursday in November to be kept as a national holiday.
This quick over-view of the early history of the Thanksgiving celebration leaves us with a rather bleak view, and suggests that the focus of our thanksgivings should be not so much on the institutionalized celebration of Thanksgiving Day, which, in any case, has lost much of its God-centered emphasis, overwhelmed by a fair amount of jingoism, the kind of “my country right or wrong” attitude, as on the elements in our contemporary life for which we can be ‘truly thankful’.
The (much maligned) Enlightenment
The modern historical method that presents for us this somewhat deflating picture also has a much more positive side: it does more than expose beloved myths as romantic fabrications. The way we now study history is part of a much wider movement that has, since the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century, revealed to us amazing new insights into the physical world. The move from knowledge based on assumptions (philosophers call it an a priori approach), to that based on observation and rigorous checking methods (an a posteriori approach) produced, firstly a new understanding of the universe in which we live, and, secondly, a whole new way of understanding the past which included the ability to read the bible with new eyes: we can hear the teaching of Jesus as it has been translated for us anew by the patient work of critical scholars in the last two centuries. They have revealed for us a man who was the very opposite of exclusive and whose teaching was often aimed at people who held precisely the views of the Pilgrim father and their successors.
As I look more closely at the two areas of science and history, I find more than enough to provide an out-pouring of thanks: for the Christian that giving of thanks is not merely the very human response to good fortune, a kind of psychological mechanism that reacts to good gifts in the face of the fragility of humanity. It is, rather an outpouring of thanks to God who we believe under-pins our whole universe and our individual lives and in whom we trust.
The Gifts of Science
For me personally, these two movements of the last centuries are central to my thanksgivings today, joining, perhaps, supreme thanks we all give for family and friendship at this time.
It is hard to know where to start in giving thanks for the work of the great army of patient, and often persecuted scientists: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Darwin, Lister, Pasteur, Heisenberg. Some of these scientists have enabled us to look out into far space or into the microscopic structures of nature; others have applied scientific results to medicine and the understanding of our environment. They have removed, at least for more fortunate parts of the world the absolute dread that was connected with the word “hospital” right up until the middle of the 19th century. Missing out innumerable others we might end with Watson and Crick who made possible the whole contemporary knowledge of genetics with its promise of alleviating much human suffering.
The Insights of Historical Biblical Study
Although there are elements in the scientific developments of the last two centuries that the contemporary religious conservatives reject, - notoriously, on the theoretical level Darwin’s conclusions, and on the practical, genetic research, - on the whole they embrace modernity. They expect painless dentistry, and organize vast TV networks that use the most up-to-date electronic technology.
It is in the other area where I want most to give thanks that the successors of the Pilgrim Fathers can find no reason so to do. I give thanks for the patient and, often, laborious work of scholars who have enabled us to see Jesus more clearly. If you have ever seen a great painting after careful and expert restoration, you will get the idea. In one area above all others, our understanding has been enlightened: we now know that Jesus was not an excluder, that he did not say that only Christians were acceptable to God: on the contrary, he welcomed above all others the outcast and despised of society.
So much more could be said, but I will give just one more illustration of how we have been enabled to see new perspectives in the scriptures, perspectives given us given by careful historical research, and it is one that is most appropriate for Thanksgiving Day. Bible scholar Virginia Ramey Mollenkott found many kinds of families in the Bible. In each instance, she wrote, “the Biblically based family value is to value family”. Where there is love, commitment, and the will to be a family, there is family. And there, in the midst, is God, to whom we all give thanks for our families.
Our Father
The excellent paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book seems to me to sum up many of the insights of which I have spoken: it is inclusive, it recognizes the mystery of the Godhead and it speaks of a commonwealth very different from the Township of Plimouth of 1621. It suggests a move from the attitude that the “dogma is the datum” to an attempt to hear anew the things that Jesus is saying to us in the power of the Spirit.
Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
[Let] The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
[Let] The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.
I have to confess that when I began preparation for this sermon I had somewhat hazy ideas about the evolution of the American national holiday of Thanksgiving, but I could never have ended a piece on the history of Thanksgiving that I found on a Web site with the resounding words: “Thanks to the Pilgrims, we have greater freedom in religion & government today”. As so often happens, a persecuted minority became persecutors almost as soon as they established authority over others, and the idea that the Puritans promoted “freedom of religion” is, to say the least, ludicrous.
Outside the Covenant
Innumerable ironies emerge as one considers the idealized version of that first Thanksgiving. That it was the harvest festival of the old England transplanted to New England and lasted three days seems historically accurate. The first irony is that it was made possible by the Indians whose land the new settlers had (to put it delicately) acquired. It was the Indians who taught these largely middles class, extremely narrow-minded academics how to farm in the new world. My historian wife gave me some details I didn’t know: the Separatists would not have made it through the first winter without substantial aid from the Indians; they would not have managed as farmers without significant help, for example, the practice of planting maize (corn) with a few small fish to act as fertilizer; they relied on help, too, to identify native plants that were edible and not dangerous. In spite of all this, it was not long before the majority asserted the very kind of theology that had made them such a pain in England. Indians were heathen, not part of the covenant and certainly not be included among the Saints who had come to found a “city set on the hill”, the New Jerusalem.
Still With Us
And a second irony is that while this early exclusivism did not by any means become the dominant element of the new nation, it has repeatedly re-appeared in our national life. The attempts of the Evangelical Christian Right have many echoes of the Pilgrim Fathers’ attitudes: rigid control of private and familial behavior; devaluation of other faiths; interpreting misfortune and sickness as divine judgment are but a few of the traits that indicate the parentage of the contemporary Religious right. However, the myth of the brave founders marched on: George Washington declared a national thanksgiving in 1789, though many opposed to it, thinking hardships of a few pilgrims did not warrant a national thanksgiving, and, of course, Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea. Still, finally, in 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the final Thursday in November to be kept as a national holiday.
This quick over-view of the early history of the Thanksgiving celebration leaves us with a rather bleak view, and suggests that the focus of our thanksgivings should be not so much on the institutionalized celebration of Thanksgiving Day, which, in any case, has lost much of its God-centered emphasis, overwhelmed by a fair amount of jingoism, the kind of “my country right or wrong” attitude, as on the elements in our contemporary life for which we can be ‘truly thankful’.
The (much maligned) Enlightenment
The modern historical method that presents for us this somewhat deflating picture also has a much more positive side: it does more than expose beloved myths as romantic fabrications. The way we now study history is part of a much wider movement that has, since the beginnings of modern science in the seventeenth century, revealed to us amazing new insights into the physical world. The move from knowledge based on assumptions (philosophers call it an a priori approach), to that based on observation and rigorous checking methods (an a posteriori approach) produced, firstly a new understanding of the universe in which we live, and, secondly, a whole new way of understanding the past which included the ability to read the bible with new eyes: we can hear the teaching of Jesus as it has been translated for us anew by the patient work of critical scholars in the last two centuries. They have revealed for us a man who was the very opposite of exclusive and whose teaching was often aimed at people who held precisely the views of the Pilgrim father and their successors.
As I look more closely at the two areas of science and history, I find more than enough to provide an out-pouring of thanks: for the Christian that giving of thanks is not merely the very human response to good fortune, a kind of psychological mechanism that reacts to good gifts in the face of the fragility of humanity. It is, rather an outpouring of thanks to God who we believe under-pins our whole universe and our individual lives and in whom we trust.
The Gifts of Science
For me personally, these two movements of the last centuries are central to my thanksgivings today, joining, perhaps, supreme thanks we all give for family and friendship at this time.
It is hard to know where to start in giving thanks for the work of the great army of patient, and often persecuted scientists: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Darwin, Lister, Pasteur, Heisenberg. Some of these scientists have enabled us to look out into far space or into the microscopic structures of nature; others have applied scientific results to medicine and the understanding of our environment. They have removed, at least for more fortunate parts of the world the absolute dread that was connected with the word “hospital” right up until the middle of the 19th century. Missing out innumerable others we might end with Watson and Crick who made possible the whole contemporary knowledge of genetics with its promise of alleviating much human suffering.
The Insights of Historical Biblical Study
Although there are elements in the scientific developments of the last two centuries that the contemporary religious conservatives reject, - notoriously, on the theoretical level Darwin’s conclusions, and on the practical, genetic research, - on the whole they embrace modernity. They expect painless dentistry, and organize vast TV networks that use the most up-to-date electronic technology.
It is in the other area where I want most to give thanks that the successors of the Pilgrim Fathers can find no reason so to do. I give thanks for the patient and, often, laborious work of scholars who have enabled us to see Jesus more clearly. If you have ever seen a great painting after careful and expert restoration, you will get the idea. In one area above all others, our understanding has been enlightened: we now know that Jesus was not an excluder, that he did not say that only Christians were acceptable to God: on the contrary, he welcomed above all others the outcast and despised of society.
So much more could be said, but I will give just one more illustration of how we have been enabled to see new perspectives in the scriptures, perspectives given us given by careful historical research, and it is one that is most appropriate for Thanksgiving Day. Bible scholar Virginia Ramey Mollenkott found many kinds of families in the Bible. In each instance, she wrote, “the Biblically based family value is to value family”. Where there is love, commitment, and the will to be a family, there is family. And there, in the midst, is God, to whom we all give thanks for our families.
Our Father
The excellent paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book seems to me to sum up many of the insights of which I have spoken: it is inclusive, it recognizes the mystery of the Godhead and it speaks of a commonwealth very different from the Township of Plimouth of 1621. It suggests a move from the attitude that the “dogma is the datum” to an attempt to hear anew the things that Jesus is saying to us in the power of the Spirit.
Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
[Let] The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
[Let] The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.
Monday, November 06, 2006
All Saints – Here or There?
More than once I have arrived in church on the Sunday in the octave of Advent, having spent no little time in preparing a sermon based on the readings for Proper 25 or whatever number we have got toward the end of the Pentecost season, only to be reminded that the Prayer Book allows the use of the All Saints Day readings, (P.B. p.15 under “principal feasts”). This year I remembered in good time, checked the insert and noted that it used the first set of readings given in the Lectionary on p. 925. It then struck me that I had never been presented with the Second set of readings and wondered who made the choice. The only answer seems to be that it is the firm that publishes the insert that goes into the parish bulletin.
Alternate Readings:
Set I: Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-10,13-14
Revelation 7:2-4,9-17
Matthew 5:1-12
Set II Eccles: 2: (1-6) 7-11
Ephesians 1: (11-14)15-23
Luke 6:20-26 (27-36)
I then thought it might be interesting to compare the two sets: the comparison suggested that two rather different points of view about what a saint is were being presented, something that should warn us not to assume that the N.T. is a monolithic set of documents all saying the same thing about God, Jesus and us.
Both alternatives have a lesson from Ben Sirach, (Ecclesiasticus), not, of course Old Testament, but full of interesting Hellenized Judaic themes. There are no very striking differences between the two readings, though it might be that Set II emphasizes to some degree the living of a saintly life, facing the testing that reveals trust in God.
The second lessons, though, give us a clear contrast: the Set I reading from Revelation paints an imaginary scenario of the heavenly realm: saints are super-human figures pictured as doing obeisance to the Emperor (people literally did have to touch their foreheads to the ground when approaching the Emperor). In the alternate reading from the Letter to Ephesus, the saints are contemporary Christians, living in the here-and-now, sharing a hope that the Rule of God (as in the “Our Father” prayer) will be perfected soon.
Matthew, Luke and Thomas
In both sets, the Gospel centers on the teaching of Jesus, known in Matthew as the Beatitudes, and in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain, and, again, there is a big difference between those two versions of Jesus's words. Luke’s version is, one might say, down to earth. It is those who are hungry who are blessed, whereas in Matthew it is “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” who are blessed.
In general, I think it is true to say that our view of saints tends to be colored by the readings of Set I so that we think in ‘other worldly’ terms rather than about the present demands of the rule of God.
There are, moreover, good reasons for thinking that Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is nearer to Jesus’ original teaching, not the least being that the Gospel of Thomas has a saying (69b) that agrees with Luke against Matthew.
The Saints who are in Corinth
Much in the NT reminds us that sainthood is something to do with the here and now. When Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, he addresses his words to, "the saints who live in Corinth", and if we read of the goings on in that church, we may wonder about our normal definition of sainthood. The reputation of Corinth was so bad that a term was coined to describe someone corrupted by excess: “Corinthianised”.
As we listen to the words of the beatitudes and to St Paul in I Cor. 13 where he gives us a blue-print of the Christian character, we get the picture of the person who is presented to us in the life and teaching of Jesus. Thus, in our baptism, it is said that "we put on Christ", or that we are joined to him. Clearly, this does not effect a total and immediate change in our lives, but it does give us the potential, to become what it is that God wants us to be: we do not have to wait for some future state to become saints; that is what we are called to be working at right now.
An Inclusive Church
That there are many who respond to and share the love of God who are not be found in our congregations must be a foundation of any inclusive church: God finds those who will respond to his love in places that we might not think proper, but God's love is greater than our human measuring of it. At the present time in our society, this is a point that cannot be too strongly emphasized. One of the foundations of the conservative Christian right is a firm statement that God accepts only those who are Christians, perhaps, even, ‘born again Christians’ (hard luck most Episcopalians!) and other world religions are at best comforting myths, and at worst, demonic. In the face of this ideological stance, we must insist that this is not the overall view of the NT; indeed, it is not the only view in the OT, though it is, without doubt, the predominant one, and it is the Hebrew texts that are most exclusive in language that are most often used in fundamentalist circles.
Present and Future
My conclusion after meditating on the two sets of readings was that they do, in fact, reflect a development in the idea of sainthood that began towards the very end of the New Testament period and went on to the full-blown doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval church, via the very understandable practice of things like the Eucharist celebrated in a third century cave where a Martyr was buried. The development of the cult of saints could not have happened without the ascendancy of a Neoplatonic notion of an immortal soul. This is a notion almost entirely absent from the New Testament, (though often obscured by the translation of psyche (nephesh) by soul rather than ‘life’ or ‘self’), but found in the very earliest Patristic writings.
The New Testament is, of course, not without a clear future perspective, but apart from the Book of Revelation, its writers are noticeably reticent about the details of life after the resurrection of the saints. Paul speaks of the dead as “asleep in Christ”, (I Thess. 4.14ff; I Cor. 15.51), awaiting the resurrection at the eschaton. The Deutero-Pauline letters, on the other hand, seem to imply a sharing already of the resurrection, perhaps of a spiritual kind? (Col. 2.12). One of the Nag Hammidi Treatises, goes much further:
We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly.
It may well be this clearly Gnostic teaching that had already elicited a rebuttal in 2 Tim.2.16, where false teachers hold “that the resurrection is already past”. Even this development of a ‘spiritual’ resurrection does not supply any detailed scenario of heaven, and the general tenor of the New Testament is minimalist about what happens after death. The Book of Revelation gives us pictures and metaphors, but it is important to remember that they are just pictures: a royal court or an unending church service, for example. Neither of these images is in any way appealing, I would think, to those who have thrown off monarchy, and become quite fidgety if a service lasts much more than sixty minutes.
When next I have to preach on All Saints Sunday, I am going to insist that whatever the Insert in the program for the day has, I am going to use Set II of the assigned readings.
Alternate Readings:
Set I: Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-10,13-14
Revelation 7:2-4,9-17
Matthew 5:1-12
Set II Eccles: 2: (1-6) 7-11
Ephesians 1: (11-14)15-23
Luke 6:20-26 (27-36)
I then thought it might be interesting to compare the two sets: the comparison suggested that two rather different points of view about what a saint is were being presented, something that should warn us not to assume that the N.T. is a monolithic set of documents all saying the same thing about God, Jesus and us.
Both alternatives have a lesson from Ben Sirach, (Ecclesiasticus), not, of course Old Testament, but full of interesting Hellenized Judaic themes. There are no very striking differences between the two readings, though it might be that Set II emphasizes to some degree the living of a saintly life, facing the testing that reveals trust in God.
The second lessons, though, give us a clear contrast: the Set I reading from Revelation paints an imaginary scenario of the heavenly realm: saints are super-human figures pictured as doing obeisance to the Emperor (people literally did have to touch their foreheads to the ground when approaching the Emperor). In the alternate reading from the Letter to Ephesus, the saints are contemporary Christians, living in the here-and-now, sharing a hope that the Rule of God (as in the “Our Father” prayer) will be perfected soon.
Matthew, Luke and Thomas
In both sets, the Gospel centers on the teaching of Jesus, known in Matthew as the Beatitudes, and in Luke as the Sermon on the Plain, and, again, there is a big difference between those two versions of Jesus's words. Luke’s version is, one might say, down to earth. It is those who are hungry who are blessed, whereas in Matthew it is “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” who are blessed.
In general, I think it is true to say that our view of saints tends to be colored by the readings of Set I so that we think in ‘other worldly’ terms rather than about the present demands of the rule of God.
There are, moreover, good reasons for thinking that Luke’s version of the Beatitudes is nearer to Jesus’ original teaching, not the least being that the Gospel of Thomas has a saying (69b) that agrees with Luke against Matthew.
The Saints who are in Corinth
Much in the NT reminds us that sainthood is something to do with the here and now. When Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, he addresses his words to, "the saints who live in Corinth", and if we read of the goings on in that church, we may wonder about our normal definition of sainthood. The reputation of Corinth was so bad that a term was coined to describe someone corrupted by excess: “Corinthianised”.
As we listen to the words of the beatitudes and to St Paul in I Cor. 13 where he gives us a blue-print of the Christian character, we get the picture of the person who is presented to us in the life and teaching of Jesus. Thus, in our baptism, it is said that "we put on Christ", or that we are joined to him. Clearly, this does not effect a total and immediate change in our lives, but it does give us the potential, to become what it is that God wants us to be: we do not have to wait for some future state to become saints; that is what we are called to be working at right now.
An Inclusive Church
That there are many who respond to and share the love of God who are not be found in our congregations must be a foundation of any inclusive church: God finds those who will respond to his love in places that we might not think proper, but God's love is greater than our human measuring of it. At the present time in our society, this is a point that cannot be too strongly emphasized. One of the foundations of the conservative Christian right is a firm statement that God accepts only those who are Christians, perhaps, even, ‘born again Christians’ (hard luck most Episcopalians!) and other world religions are at best comforting myths, and at worst, demonic. In the face of this ideological stance, we must insist that this is not the overall view of the NT; indeed, it is not the only view in the OT, though it is, without doubt, the predominant one, and it is the Hebrew texts that are most exclusive in language that are most often used in fundamentalist circles.
Present and Future
My conclusion after meditating on the two sets of readings was that they do, in fact, reflect a development in the idea of sainthood that began towards the very end of the New Testament period and went on to the full-blown doctrines and practices of the Mediaeval church, via the very understandable practice of things like the Eucharist celebrated in a third century cave where a Martyr was buried. The development of the cult of saints could not have happened without the ascendancy of a Neoplatonic notion of an immortal soul. This is a notion almost entirely absent from the New Testament, (though often obscured by the translation of psyche (nephesh) by soul rather than ‘life’ or ‘self’), but found in the very earliest Patristic writings.
The New Testament is, of course, not without a clear future perspective, but apart from the Book of Revelation, its writers are noticeably reticent about the details of life after the resurrection of the saints. Paul speaks of the dead as “asleep in Christ”, (I Thess. 4.14ff; I Cor. 15.51), awaiting the resurrection at the eschaton. The Deutero-Pauline letters, on the other hand, seem to imply a sharing already of the resurrection, perhaps of a spiritual kind? (Col. 2.12). One of the Nag Hammidi Treatises, goes much further:
We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly.
It may well be this clearly Gnostic teaching that had already elicited a rebuttal in 2 Tim.2.16, where false teachers hold “that the resurrection is already past”. Even this development of a ‘spiritual’ resurrection does not supply any detailed scenario of heaven, and the general tenor of the New Testament is minimalist about what happens after death. The Book of Revelation gives us pictures and metaphors, but it is important to remember that they are just pictures: a royal court or an unending church service, for example. Neither of these images is in any way appealing, I would think, to those who have thrown off monarchy, and become quite fidgety if a service lasts much more than sixty minutes.
When next I have to preach on All Saints Sunday, I am going to insist that whatever the Insert in the program for the day has, I am going to use Set II of the assigned readings.
Friday, October 27, 2006
ADVENT
Beginnings
The Liturgical season of Advent was firmly established by the sixth century; patterned on the Lenten scheme, it was a later development because the Christmas feast itself was later and less important than Easter. At an earlier date, the Feast of the Epiphany was more important than Christmas, as it still is in the Greek Orthodox Church. It seems probable that there was a period of penitential preparation for Catechumens awaiting Baptism on the day Jesus’ baptism by John was commemorated: thus this element is still found in the readings for Advent II, centered on John the Baptizer.
Emergence of the Four Sunday Season
In the sixth century, what became Advent was often called St. Martin’s Lent, beginning on November 11th, the feast of St. Martin, and lasting to the eve of Christmas, but by the eighth century, the familiar four Sundays seem to have become the norm, with festive elements appropriate for a preparation for the joy of Christmas. Even so, the penitential element did not completely disappear, and, indeed, was strengthened by the addition of apocalyptic biblical material linking the Second Coming of the Christ to the birth of the baby in Bethlehem. Massey Shepherd sums this up well in his comments on the season of Advent (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, O.U.P. 1951, p.90):
The double emphasis, therefore, on both the first and the second advents of Christ gives to the season its unique mixture of devotional color: joy in the redemption that has come to us in the Incarnation, and awe before the Judgment that yet awaits us. Yet to the spiritually discerning believer both of these tremendous and signal events of past and future are experienced as eternally present realities.”
The Second Coming & Theological Issues
It my be my imagination, but I sense in Massey Shepherd’s final sentence a certain, shall we say, hesitancy, and that would not be at all surprising: there seems to be an effort to move to a “realized eschatology”, advocated by C. H. Dodd in his seminal book The Parables of the Kingdom, (1935). The whole issue of the second coming with its overtones of Millenarianism, Dispensationalism and prophecies of Armageddon has made some main stream theologians uneasy at least since the middle of the 19th century. The assumption that “future events” in some way or other actually exist depends on some kind of “salvation history”, or Platonic-like scheme that implies the existence of the whole sweep of history in some eternal (pre-determined?) sphere. This is the kind of overview that is given us in Apocalypses, beginning in the mid first century B.C.E., where past events and rulers are presented in symbols of a one-on-one kind – ‘the abomination of Desolation’ = Antiochus Epiphanes etc., so that if we are clever enough, we can work out who really is the Beast about to cause such havoc! Early Christians could also equate Jesus with an apocalyptic Son of Man figure and look for the inevitable signs of his return in judgment and glory.
That the N.T. has a vibrant apocalyptic component goes without saying, and since Weiss and Schweitzer it has become critical orthodoxy to consider Jesus as working within an apocalyptic frame-work; indeed, it has been fairly common to describe him as an apocalyptic figure, proclaiming an imminent end to this world order; this, of course, has the corollary that Jesus was, like every other predictor of the end of history, mistaken. In the nineteenth century, this was enough to reject out of hand such German critical scholarship. Given the predominant Christology of the time in the Church of England, the suggestion that Jesus could be wrong on so central a point produced outcries of horror and pain from the University cloisters and from the Deaneries set in every Cathedral Close (precinct), and from not a few rural Rectory studies. (See my Anglican Polity & New Knowledge on this Blog site).
Eschatological Prophet
In recent decades, however, quite other and very much more substantial reasons have been produced for revising the apocalyptic view of Jesus. This revision has resulted from careful exegetical endeavors, including, particularly, painstaking analysis of the Parables and the Rule of God sayings in the synoptic tradition by C.H.Dodd,
R. Bultmann, J. Jeremias, Eta Linnemann, Norman Perrin and Dominic Crossan, to name just a few. The message of Jesus is clearly eschatological, and can be shown to be rooted more firmly in the earlier prophetic tradition than in the apocalypticism of the period. Careful analysis by these scholars suggests that much of the apocalyptic scenario was introduced in the very early transmission and possible reshaping of Jesus’ words at the same time as the accounts of the events of his ministry (together with attempts to interpret those events) were being formed.
Rule of God in St. Paul
Central to much discussion has been the origin of the notion of Jesus’ speedy return, a doctrine of the Second Coming. Our earliest witness, St. Paul, clearly expresses a note of immediacy. A locus classicus is I Thess. 4.15ff: “we who are alive will be caught up in the clouds”, but there is a notable absence of vivid apocalyptic detail, and Jesus does not seem even to return to earth since he will be met “in the air”. Frequently noted in this respect is I Cor. 16.22 where Paul ends his letter with the prayer Marana tha (Μαρανα θα). In most translations this is read as “Our Lord come”, but it is quite possible that the Aramaic phrase should be read Maran atha which is, “Our Lord has come”. Paul’s use of the term Rule of God is never in an apocalyptic frame: (see, I Cor.4.20; I Thess. 2.12 – both of these imply the presence of God’s rule in individuals and the community; I Cor. 6.9-10; 15.50; Gal. 5.21). Romans 14.17 suggests, again, that the Christian is living already within the sphere of divine influence that the phrase Kingdom (Rule) of God implies. It also should be pointed out that the overall tenor of Paul’s Christology is subordinationist, that is, he is barely orthodox in the Nicene sense of claiming Jesus' equality with the Father. The long passage which rounds off Paul’s treatment of the resurrection in I Corinthians is strongly eschatological, but hardly apocalyptic. The “reign” mentioned in v. 25 seems to be the continuing eschatological battle between God, and the powers of evil, (elsewhere the ‘principalities’ and ‘rulers of this age’), clearly seen in the ministry of Jesus and being carried on by those who are “in Christ” until the victory is won, and, thinks Paul, that is to be very soon indeed. The end of the process is that “God may be all things in all things” (παντα εν πασιν).
The Rule of God in the Teaching of Jesus
This is a vast subject and only the barest summary can be given. The work of the scholars noted above has been responsible for putting the parables of Jesus in the very center of our understanding of his teaching. There is, of course, much else besides the parables centered on the Rule of God theme, coming from Q and found in the Gospel of Thomas in the form of isolated sayings (though often collected in groups by the Evangelists or their sources): these have been identified as wisdom sayings (‘wisdom is vindicated by her deeds), proverbial sayings (‘let the dead bury their dead’), reversal sayings (‘the first shall be last’), and different scholars suggest varying classifications. It is, however, the parables that provide our most reliable insight into that central focus of Jesus’ teaching: the Rule of God - Basileia tou Theou.
Parables & Allegories
I have found Norman Perrin’s Jesus & the Language of the Kingdom, S.C.M. Press, 1976, a masterly summary of the way in which the understanding of the parables has developed, of immense help in my studies in this field. He gives an overview of the developments of the last century beginning with the work of Johannes Weiss (1892) and the “epoch-making work” of A. Jülicher. From a very early date, the parables have been read as exemplary stories, exhorting to Christian living and the practice of behavior like repentance, generosity, and patience. Another significant feature from their very earliest retelling (and writing down) has been to treat these dramatic extended metaphors as allegories: it was this vital distinction between parable and allegory that was Jülicher’s signal contribution, and all subsequent 20th century exegesis has taken this as a starting point. It is widely accepted today that a clear distinction must be made between the two genres: the parables, in origin, are oral material, whereas an allegory is a written, literary production. It has become clear, too, that the parable does not give us information as does an allegory, but makes a single central point, often about the Kingdom of God; in an allegory, each detail has an equivalent, something like a code that must be broken: the details in one of the longer parables, on the other hand, are there because they are part of the story. The various kinds of ground in the Sower parable do not represent different kinds of human personality; it is just the way an ordinary field is, waiting for the Autumn sowing.
Gospel of Thomas
As a result of much careful work, Jeremias and others have exposed for us both
whole allegories added to a parable, and, perhaps more importantly, allegorical details embedded in the text as we have received it. It is significant that the version of the Parable of the Sower found in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying #9) does not have the allegorical addition that we find in Mark. Perrin comments on the importance of the Thomas evidence as follows: "Most parable commentators [have come] to hold the versions of the parables in Thomas to be independent of the versions in the canonical gospels and hence a valuable addition to our resources for reconstructing the text of a given parable." (JLK p.132).
Literary Genre
There is much more that can be said, but, for now, one final point before returning to the issue of the Second Coming: it concerns the literary significance of the two genres. Perrin shows that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between allegory and parable considered as a "language event". The metaphorical/symbolic language of the allegory is expendable, while that of the parable is inexhaustible. Once one has decoded an allegory, the metaphorical language is spent, but this is not the case of a parable, which can be categorized as an extended metaphor. Perhaps an analogy might be that a check once cashed is finished, that which it stood for has been delivered; an equity loan (of vast proportion) on the other hand can be drawn on again and again, and it can also meet changing needs. This represents Perrin”s technical distinction between a ‘steno’ symbol (one on one) and a ‘tensive’ symbol (open ended).
Rule of God in Parable & Saying
The parables convey Jesus’ central message that the Rule of God is upon us and demands action from us; they are not cryptic puzzles from which we may tease information about God and God’s action in the world. They are, rather, the way in which Jesus ‘pulled’ his hearers, and pulls us into sharing his total commitment to the God who holds everything in being (remember Paul’s “may be all and in all”). One might say that the parables are performative, not informative. They challenge the hearer to life decisions: sell everything and buy this pearl; to readjust deeply ingrained racist attitudes: the Samaritan is my savior; and to accept a new view of God’s grace: the three hour worker is paid for a whole day’s labor.
Although some of the parables look to the future fulfillment of the Kingdom, they all also project the Rule of God as active now, and this is an element in several crucial sayings. We may note particularly Luke 11.20, “If I by the finger of God cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. Clearly Jesus claims that his exorcisms are evidence o God’s present, saving activity. Perrin also sees an interesting connection here between the Kaddish prayer of the Synagogue : “May he establish the Kingdom in your lifetime”, and the prayer Jesus taught, “Your Kingdom come”. Both are strongly eschatological but are not apocalyptic in tone.
The Second Coming & Advent
Did Jesus predict in apocalyptic symbolism his return in Judgment such as is enshrined in some of the liturgical texts of Advent? The evidence of the parables and sayings suggests not, and it is reasonable to suppose that in a milieu dominated by messianic and apocalyptic expectations, it would not be difficult for these ideas to be incorporated into the gospel tradition in the process of its formation. After all, there is no doubt that Jesus’ message looked to a future completing of the Rule of God, and his message could easily be interpreted in contemporary apocalyptic symbolism.
In this respect, Luke 17.20-21, compared with 17.22-23 is highly instructive: “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (entos humõn). At one time it was common to translate this as “within you”, perhaps influenced by an individualistic spirituality, but linguistically it really must be “among you”. Here again we have strong evidence for Jesus’ awareness of God’s rule active now. Perrin (JLK p. 58) points out, however, that the following verses (22 & 23) are an interpretation of this saying in apocalyptic terms. Jesus’ reference to the Kingdom of God is interpreted as a reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds. In an earlier work Perrin wrote: “The first result of the investigation [some 200 pages] is, then, to establish major differences between Jesus and his contemporaries in that, although he spoke of the future, he gave neither specific form to his future expectation (beyond the general one of vindication and implied judgment), nor did he express it in terms of a specific time element.” (Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, S.C.M. Press 1967, p.204).
So, What to Say in Advent
Such biblical insights do not easily overturn centuries of dogmatic and liturgical tradition, and so we are left to do what we can with the apocalyptic furniture of the earliest interpreters of Jesus' message. It is not common in Anglican preaching to use the results of critical scholarship – how often have you heard a preacher note that a saying of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is a wonderful second-generation insight into some issue? And the result is that what is common knowledge in the lecture halls of many Seminaries is a closed book to many. A corollary of this is that when someone publishes a popular book containing all the scholarly assumptions, there is an outcry: the most spectacular example of this was the publication in 1963 of John Robinson’s Honest to God, which produced the customary Church of England howls of pain, such as, “How could a Bishop write things like this?”
So far as the 1979 Episcopal Prayer Book Lectionary is concerned, it is only the first Sunday that has strongly apocalyptic material, and that might be a good opportunity to do some teaching about the ways in which the early generations of Christians interpreted, edited and in some instances transformed the teaching of Jesus. We might also emphasize the importance of the Epiphany and the clear tendency of Luke to associate the Messiahship of Jesus with his Baptism by John, (and Paul possibly with the Resurrection - Rom. 1.4), giving thanks that Advent includes the baptismal narratives. Of course, that would raise the question of the Nicene Creed, and the ‘orthodoxy’ of Luke and Paul.
The Liturgical season of Advent was firmly established by the sixth century; patterned on the Lenten scheme, it was a later development because the Christmas feast itself was later and less important than Easter. At an earlier date, the Feast of the Epiphany was more important than Christmas, as it still is in the Greek Orthodox Church. It seems probable that there was a period of penitential preparation for Catechumens awaiting Baptism on the day Jesus’ baptism by John was commemorated: thus this element is still found in the readings for Advent II, centered on John the Baptizer.
Emergence of the Four Sunday Season
In the sixth century, what became Advent was often called St. Martin’s Lent, beginning on November 11th, the feast of St. Martin, and lasting to the eve of Christmas, but by the eighth century, the familiar four Sundays seem to have become the norm, with festive elements appropriate for a preparation for the joy of Christmas. Even so, the penitential element did not completely disappear, and, indeed, was strengthened by the addition of apocalyptic biblical material linking the Second Coming of the Christ to the birth of the baby in Bethlehem. Massey Shepherd sums this up well in his comments on the season of Advent (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, O.U.P. 1951, p.90):
The double emphasis, therefore, on both the first and the second advents of Christ gives to the season its unique mixture of devotional color: joy in the redemption that has come to us in the Incarnation, and awe before the Judgment that yet awaits us. Yet to the spiritually discerning believer both of these tremendous and signal events of past and future are experienced as eternally present realities.”
The Second Coming & Theological Issues
It my be my imagination, but I sense in Massey Shepherd’s final sentence a certain, shall we say, hesitancy, and that would not be at all surprising: there seems to be an effort to move to a “realized eschatology”, advocated by C. H. Dodd in his seminal book The Parables of the Kingdom, (1935). The whole issue of the second coming with its overtones of Millenarianism, Dispensationalism and prophecies of Armageddon has made some main stream theologians uneasy at least since the middle of the 19th century. The assumption that “future events” in some way or other actually exist depends on some kind of “salvation history”, or Platonic-like scheme that implies the existence of the whole sweep of history in some eternal (pre-determined?) sphere. This is the kind of overview that is given us in Apocalypses, beginning in the mid first century B.C.E., where past events and rulers are presented in symbols of a one-on-one kind – ‘the abomination of Desolation’ = Antiochus Epiphanes etc., so that if we are clever enough, we can work out who really is the Beast about to cause such havoc! Early Christians could also equate Jesus with an apocalyptic Son of Man figure and look for the inevitable signs of his return in judgment and glory.
That the N.T. has a vibrant apocalyptic component goes without saying, and since Weiss and Schweitzer it has become critical orthodoxy to consider Jesus as working within an apocalyptic frame-work; indeed, it has been fairly common to describe him as an apocalyptic figure, proclaiming an imminent end to this world order; this, of course, has the corollary that Jesus was, like every other predictor of the end of history, mistaken. In the nineteenth century, this was enough to reject out of hand such German critical scholarship. Given the predominant Christology of the time in the Church of England, the suggestion that Jesus could be wrong on so central a point produced outcries of horror and pain from the University cloisters and from the Deaneries set in every Cathedral Close (precinct), and from not a few rural Rectory studies. (See my Anglican Polity & New Knowledge on this Blog site).
Eschatological Prophet
In recent decades, however, quite other and very much more substantial reasons have been produced for revising the apocalyptic view of Jesus. This revision has resulted from careful exegetical endeavors, including, particularly, painstaking analysis of the Parables and the Rule of God sayings in the synoptic tradition by C.H.Dodd,
R. Bultmann, J. Jeremias, Eta Linnemann, Norman Perrin and Dominic Crossan, to name just a few. The message of Jesus is clearly eschatological, and can be shown to be rooted more firmly in the earlier prophetic tradition than in the apocalypticism of the period. Careful analysis by these scholars suggests that much of the apocalyptic scenario was introduced in the very early transmission and possible reshaping of Jesus’ words at the same time as the accounts of the events of his ministry (together with attempts to interpret those events) were being formed.
Rule of God in St. Paul
Central to much discussion has been the origin of the notion of Jesus’ speedy return, a doctrine of the Second Coming. Our earliest witness, St. Paul, clearly expresses a note of immediacy. A locus classicus is I Thess. 4.15ff: “we who are alive will be caught up in the clouds”, but there is a notable absence of vivid apocalyptic detail, and Jesus does not seem even to return to earth since he will be met “in the air”. Frequently noted in this respect is I Cor. 16.22 where Paul ends his letter with the prayer Marana tha (Μαρανα θα). In most translations this is read as “Our Lord come”, but it is quite possible that the Aramaic phrase should be read Maran atha which is, “Our Lord has come”. Paul’s use of the term Rule of God is never in an apocalyptic frame: (see, I Cor.4.20; I Thess. 2.12 – both of these imply the presence of God’s rule in individuals and the community; I Cor. 6.9-10; 15.50; Gal. 5.21). Romans 14.17 suggests, again, that the Christian is living already within the sphere of divine influence that the phrase Kingdom (Rule) of God implies. It also should be pointed out that the overall tenor of Paul’s Christology is subordinationist, that is, he is barely orthodox in the Nicene sense of claiming Jesus' equality with the Father. The long passage which rounds off Paul’s treatment of the resurrection in I Corinthians is strongly eschatological, but hardly apocalyptic. The “reign” mentioned in v. 25 seems to be the continuing eschatological battle between God, and the powers of evil, (elsewhere the ‘principalities’ and ‘rulers of this age’), clearly seen in the ministry of Jesus and being carried on by those who are “in Christ” until the victory is won, and, thinks Paul, that is to be very soon indeed. The end of the process is that “God may be all things in all things” (παντα εν πασιν).
The Rule of God in the Teaching of Jesus
This is a vast subject and only the barest summary can be given. The work of the scholars noted above has been responsible for putting the parables of Jesus in the very center of our understanding of his teaching. There is, of course, much else besides the parables centered on the Rule of God theme, coming from Q and found in the Gospel of Thomas in the form of isolated sayings (though often collected in groups by the Evangelists or their sources): these have been identified as wisdom sayings (‘wisdom is vindicated by her deeds), proverbial sayings (‘let the dead bury their dead’), reversal sayings (‘the first shall be last’), and different scholars suggest varying classifications. It is, however, the parables that provide our most reliable insight into that central focus of Jesus’ teaching: the Rule of God - Basileia tou Theou.
Parables & Allegories
I have found Norman Perrin’s Jesus & the Language of the Kingdom, S.C.M. Press, 1976, a masterly summary of the way in which the understanding of the parables has developed, of immense help in my studies in this field. He gives an overview of the developments of the last century beginning with the work of Johannes Weiss (1892) and the “epoch-making work” of A. Jülicher. From a very early date, the parables have been read as exemplary stories, exhorting to Christian living and the practice of behavior like repentance, generosity, and patience. Another significant feature from their very earliest retelling (and writing down) has been to treat these dramatic extended metaphors as allegories: it was this vital distinction between parable and allegory that was Jülicher’s signal contribution, and all subsequent 20th century exegesis has taken this as a starting point. It is widely accepted today that a clear distinction must be made between the two genres: the parables, in origin, are oral material, whereas an allegory is a written, literary production. It has become clear, too, that the parable does not give us information as does an allegory, but makes a single central point, often about the Kingdom of God; in an allegory, each detail has an equivalent, something like a code that must be broken: the details in one of the longer parables, on the other hand, are there because they are part of the story. The various kinds of ground in the Sower parable do not represent different kinds of human personality; it is just the way an ordinary field is, waiting for the Autumn sowing.
Gospel of Thomas
As a result of much careful work, Jeremias and others have exposed for us both
whole allegories added to a parable, and, perhaps more importantly, allegorical details embedded in the text as we have received it. It is significant that the version of the Parable of the Sower found in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying #9) does not have the allegorical addition that we find in Mark. Perrin comments on the importance of the Thomas evidence as follows: "Most parable commentators [have come] to hold the versions of the parables in Thomas to be independent of the versions in the canonical gospels and hence a valuable addition to our resources for reconstructing the text of a given parable." (JLK p.132).
Literary Genre
There is much more that can be said, but, for now, one final point before returning to the issue of the Second Coming: it concerns the literary significance of the two genres. Perrin shows that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between allegory and parable considered as a "language event". The metaphorical/symbolic language of the allegory is expendable, while that of the parable is inexhaustible. Once one has decoded an allegory, the metaphorical language is spent, but this is not the case of a parable, which can be categorized as an extended metaphor. Perhaps an analogy might be that a check once cashed is finished, that which it stood for has been delivered; an equity loan (of vast proportion) on the other hand can be drawn on again and again, and it can also meet changing needs. This represents Perrin”s technical distinction between a ‘steno’ symbol (one on one) and a ‘tensive’ symbol (open ended).
Rule of God in Parable & Saying
The parables convey Jesus’ central message that the Rule of God is upon us and demands action from us; they are not cryptic puzzles from which we may tease information about God and God’s action in the world. They are, rather, the way in which Jesus ‘pulled’ his hearers, and pulls us into sharing his total commitment to the God who holds everything in being (remember Paul’s “may be all and in all”). One might say that the parables are performative, not informative. They challenge the hearer to life decisions: sell everything and buy this pearl; to readjust deeply ingrained racist attitudes: the Samaritan is my savior; and to accept a new view of God’s grace: the three hour worker is paid for a whole day’s labor.
Although some of the parables look to the future fulfillment of the Kingdom, they all also project the Rule of God as active now, and this is an element in several crucial sayings. We may note particularly Luke 11.20, “If I by the finger of God cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. Clearly Jesus claims that his exorcisms are evidence o God’s present, saving activity. Perrin also sees an interesting connection here between the Kaddish prayer of the Synagogue : “May he establish the Kingdom in your lifetime”, and the prayer Jesus taught, “Your Kingdom come”. Both are strongly eschatological but are not apocalyptic in tone.
The Second Coming & Advent
Did Jesus predict in apocalyptic symbolism his return in Judgment such as is enshrined in some of the liturgical texts of Advent? The evidence of the parables and sayings suggests not, and it is reasonable to suppose that in a milieu dominated by messianic and apocalyptic expectations, it would not be difficult for these ideas to be incorporated into the gospel tradition in the process of its formation. After all, there is no doubt that Jesus’ message looked to a future completing of the Rule of God, and his message could easily be interpreted in contemporary apocalyptic symbolism.
In this respect, Luke 17.20-21, compared with 17.22-23 is highly instructive: “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (entos humõn). At one time it was common to translate this as “within you”, perhaps influenced by an individualistic spirituality, but linguistically it really must be “among you”. Here again we have strong evidence for Jesus’ awareness of God’s rule active now. Perrin (JLK p. 58) points out, however, that the following verses (22 & 23) are an interpretation of this saying in apocalyptic terms. Jesus’ reference to the Kingdom of God is interpreted as a reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds. In an earlier work Perrin wrote: “The first result of the investigation [some 200 pages] is, then, to establish major differences between Jesus and his contemporaries in that, although he spoke of the future, he gave neither specific form to his future expectation (beyond the general one of vindication and implied judgment), nor did he express it in terms of a specific time element.” (Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, S.C.M. Press 1967, p.204).
So, What to Say in Advent
Such biblical insights do not easily overturn centuries of dogmatic and liturgical tradition, and so we are left to do what we can with the apocalyptic furniture of the earliest interpreters of Jesus' message. It is not common in Anglican preaching to use the results of critical scholarship – how often have you heard a preacher note that a saying of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is a wonderful second-generation insight into some issue? And the result is that what is common knowledge in the lecture halls of many Seminaries is a closed book to many. A corollary of this is that when someone publishes a popular book containing all the scholarly assumptions, there is an outcry: the most spectacular example of this was the publication in 1963 of John Robinson’s Honest to God, which produced the customary Church of England howls of pain, such as, “How could a Bishop write things like this?”
So far as the 1979 Episcopal Prayer Book Lectionary is concerned, it is only the first Sunday that has strongly apocalyptic material, and that might be a good opportunity to do some teaching about the ways in which the early generations of Christians interpreted, edited and in some instances transformed the teaching of Jesus. We might also emphasize the importance of the Epiphany and the clear tendency of Luke to associate the Messiahship of Jesus with his Baptism by John, (and Paul possibly with the Resurrection - Rom. 1.4), giving thanks that Advent includes the baptismal narratives. Of course, that would raise the question of the Nicene Creed, and the ‘orthodoxy’ of Luke and Paul.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Social Responsibility and the Church
Cultural, Biblical and Theological Musings
“A woman came with a….jar of very costly ointment …. and poured the ointment on his head….Some… said in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For [it] could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor”. And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; …. She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me; …… she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”” (Mk.14.3-8).
Jesus’ answer to the woman suggests that a concern for those in need is an almost universal category of social involvement; as Nelson Mandela has reminded us often, so many other ills are linked to poverty: disease, lack of education, crime and terrorism to name just a few. Like so many of Jesus’ sayings, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required (as in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 1776) for the economic health of the whole. Either position is problematic for the church: if history shows the ubiquitous presence of poverty, what about those who follow the teachings of Jesus: if it is part of the order of things, what of the church as a new order?
Roman Empire - Hellenism
If it is true that the poor will always be with us, is it, in fact, the case that they always have been? To pose the question at once exposes the relativity of the term. H.D.F. Kitto commenting on life in classical Greece writes, “In Greece one can lead an active life on much less food than harsher climates make necessary”. He points out that much of life was (and still is) lived out of doors not only at work but in leisure; that Athenians had so much of the latter is often attributed to the slaves they owned, but Kitto goes on, “Slavery had something to do with it, but not so much as the fact that three-quarters of the things which we slave for the Greek simply did without”. (Greeks 36).
Slavery was, perhaps, a defining characteristic of the great empires of the Nile and Euphrates deltas, and was firmly established in classical Greece, and later in the Hellenistic world of 300 B.C.E. to c. 300 C.E. It is quite impossible to generalize about so many cultures over a span of six centuries, but some context for the emergence of Judaism and then the Christian movement is essential. It might help to begin towards the end of period with a quotation from Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, a Roman Province stretching along the southern seaboard of modern Turkey. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3.27-28). Without an immense effort of historical imagination, it is hardly possible to grasp just how startling, how radical, how quite beyond the pale, sentiments like these must have sounded to the average Hellenistic citizen of the mid first century C.E. Perhaps Paul’s converts were beginning to grasp just how radical the new teaching was, but most of them came from a culture where a human being meant a citizen of Rome, or rather the Graeco/Roman culture that dominated the Mediterranean world. You were a citizen, or you were hoi polloi, - hardly an individual in a great lump of something less than humanity consisting of slaves and barbarians.
Vast numbers of impoverished and destitute people spread across the Roman world, like flotsam washed up on an empty beach. Beggars were everywhere; they appear in all kinds of contemporary writing, not least in the pages of the New Testament, and with them were the chronically sick, the abandoned children. There were also the petty thieves and prostitutes, escaped slaves and fugitives from justice and a considerable number of unemployed who were desperately trying to avoid dropping into the tide of flotsam. The parable of the day-workers that Matthew preserve for us, gives a poignant glimpse of social conditions: queues of unemployed men gathered in the market place and a small number hired. Not long ago, I saw a film clip from the nineteen thirties that had the exact scene at the dockside of a large seaport and noted the desperate look of those who were turned away. In Matthew’s story, there are still men waiting, hoping as late as three in the afternoon. (Mt. 20.1ff). And, of course, there are still people waiting in similar conditions today, gathering in parking lots in the hope of a day’s laboring.
The Old Testament
To see the beginnings of a different evaluation of the human person, we need now to turn for a look at the Judaism from which Jesus and Paul came . The vocabulary of the OT exposes factors that lie at the root of destitution. A Hebrew word, ebyon, used more than sixty times has a fairly wide meaning covering those in need for various reasons, (Deut. 15.7-11; Job 29.16); a word, (ani), used almost as frequently, however, has a distinct emphasis on poverty resulting from oppression by the powerful and rich (Ps. 35.10; Isa. 3.14-15). A major cause of poverty was, and still is largely, beyond human control: the vagaries of climate resulting in famines, and the ravages of epidemics (though, of course, with greater human concern and effort, the effects of these could, in the 21st century, be dramatically reduced). A second cause was, and certainly still is (very much, however,) under human control: human ill-will, greed, aggression and power-seeking, (the bible lumps these together as sin, not perhaps all that PC, but more accurate than something like “compassion impaired”). Very often in both the Old and New testaments there is a polarity between the rich and the poor: the rich are castigated for idleness, luxury, and greed, and the poor are seen as of special concern to Yahweh. A careful reading suggests that the main condemnation of the rich is not primarily their wealth but their misuse of power. After one of the earliest and most damning indictments of the rich, Amos concludes, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”. (5.24). Many Americans know this verse because it was often used by Martin Luther King.
Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament
When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition; both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur: the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor” (period). This is not an exhaustive list but it indicates the prevalence of the issue for the earliest followers of Jesus.
Poverty in Church History
Christian history produced movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’; from the end of the second century, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century and the heated discussions of the Reformation period. Calvin’s mediating comment on Acts 16.15 is worth quoting:
“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[But] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198)
Central to the polarizations of society is the issue of power, and the New Testament approach is clear. Authority justly exercised is to be obeyed (Rom. 13.1), but the radical nature of the gospel is seen in a saying like Mark 10.43 where Jesus contrasts the normal exercise of power with what is to be the norm in the Christian community. There was to be no “lording it” over one another; “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”. The fourth gospel depicts this saying in a dramatic scene: Jesus acts as a slave and washes the disciples' feet. The New Testament, it seems, unambiguously suggests that the Christian is called to follow Jesus by embracing the status of a slave, accepting powerlessness and placing total faith in God. Clearly, the following centuries were to see a great deal of re-interpreting to enable the church to live in “last times” which were to be measured in millennia rather than in decades. Nowhere is this more crucial than in dealing with ethical issues.
Contemporary Poverty
Whether the poor will always be with us is susceptible of an answer in the light of several revolutions in the last century and a half: the Industrial, the Green, and Information revolutions to name a few. Given the will and given the compassion poverty could be removed, but, in fact, we live in a nation of immense wealth where the number of those below the poverty line increases every year. “We can do good things for the poor whenever we wish” seems to be a part of Jesus’ saying that has got lost.
In fairness, it must be noted that since the Industrial revolution, the churches have often been in the forefront of those demanding social responsibility from governments. A good early example is the influence of the Christian Socialist movement (F.D. Maurice, Charles Gore, Scott Holland and B.F. Westcott); they produced a powerful critique of the capitalist system, and one important result of their work was the report of a committee set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christianity and Industrial Problems. Published in 1918, the report called for “a living wage, action to deal with unemployment and casual labour schemes, cooperation between employers and workers, extensions of municipal services, restrictions on profits and a housing programme”.
Conservatives Perpetuate Poverty
Doubtless the Archbishop’s committee Report horrified the wealthy members of the ECUSA of the time. Still, in the 1930s Keynes’ work (whether by direct influence or a kind of osmosis) produced the economic theory and policy tools that enabled many of the ideas of the Report to become part of the modern state’s approach to social responsibility. In spite of much rhetoric to the contrary, even the USA has incorporated many of these ideas. It is clear, though, that Conservative politicians do not like social programs, would not be sorry for Social Security to collapse (by using all its surpluses for military expenditure?) and are continually eroding Medicare benefits (note current plans to reduce payments to Doctors – see AMA Web Site)
Further, in certain strands of Christianity (which are usually also politically Conservative), a doctrine of Providence, which at one time was more or less universal, is still powerful. In the 19th century, as the horrors of the industrial revolution became known, various groups entered the fray. Among the first were the English Evangelicals; a group known as the Clapham Sect mounted campaigns for the reform of prisons and the regulation of child labor, but held firmly to a view that divine Providence orders the economy, and that the good are rewarded and the bad punished. Handouts were frowned on except for a sub-class known as the “deserving poor”. The more extreme evangelicals did not hesitate to interpret economic crises and natural disasters, (like outbreaks of cholera, frequent in the first half of the 19th century,) as God’s judgment, just as their successors see God’s punishment in AIDs and the hurricane Katrina.
Unhappily such views are still widely current among the far religious right with some mega- churches trumpeting as the Christian blessing the acquisition of great wealth, a kind of anti-asceticism, which can rest happily in the thought that the poor are always (to be) with us.
“A woman came with a….jar of very costly ointment …. and poured the ointment on his head….Some… said in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For [it] could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor”. And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; …. She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me; …… she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”” (Mk.14.3-8).
Jesus’ answer to the woman suggests that a concern for those in need is an almost universal category of social involvement; as Nelson Mandela has reminded us often, so many other ills are linked to poverty: disease, lack of education, crime and terrorism to name just a few. Like so many of Jesus’ sayings, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required (as in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 1776) for the economic health of the whole. Either position is problematic for the church: if history shows the ubiquitous presence of poverty, what about those who follow the teachings of Jesus: if it is part of the order of things, what of the church as a new order?
Roman Empire - Hellenism
If it is true that the poor will always be with us, is it, in fact, the case that they always have been? To pose the question at once exposes the relativity of the term. H.D.F. Kitto commenting on life in classical Greece writes, “In Greece one can lead an active life on much less food than harsher climates make necessary”. He points out that much of life was (and still is) lived out of doors not only at work but in leisure; that Athenians had so much of the latter is often attributed to the slaves they owned, but Kitto goes on, “Slavery had something to do with it, but not so much as the fact that three-quarters of the things which we slave for the Greek simply did without”. (Greeks 36).
Slavery was, perhaps, a defining characteristic of the great empires of the Nile and Euphrates deltas, and was firmly established in classical Greece, and later in the Hellenistic world of 300 B.C.E. to c. 300 C.E. It is quite impossible to generalize about so many cultures over a span of six centuries, but some context for the emergence of Judaism and then the Christian movement is essential. It might help to begin towards the end of period with a quotation from Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, a Roman Province stretching along the southern seaboard of modern Turkey. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3.27-28). Without an immense effort of historical imagination, it is hardly possible to grasp just how startling, how radical, how quite beyond the pale, sentiments like these must have sounded to the average Hellenistic citizen of the mid first century C.E. Perhaps Paul’s converts were beginning to grasp just how radical the new teaching was, but most of them came from a culture where a human being meant a citizen of Rome, or rather the Graeco/Roman culture that dominated the Mediterranean world. You were a citizen, or you were hoi polloi, - hardly an individual in a great lump of something less than humanity consisting of slaves and barbarians.
Vast numbers of impoverished and destitute people spread across the Roman world, like flotsam washed up on an empty beach. Beggars were everywhere; they appear in all kinds of contemporary writing, not least in the pages of the New Testament, and with them were the chronically sick, the abandoned children. There were also the petty thieves and prostitutes, escaped slaves and fugitives from justice and a considerable number of unemployed who were desperately trying to avoid dropping into the tide of flotsam. The parable of the day-workers that Matthew preserve for us, gives a poignant glimpse of social conditions: queues of unemployed men gathered in the market place and a small number hired. Not long ago, I saw a film clip from the nineteen thirties that had the exact scene at the dockside of a large seaport and noted the desperate look of those who were turned away. In Matthew’s story, there are still men waiting, hoping as late as three in the afternoon. (Mt. 20.1ff). And, of course, there are still people waiting in similar conditions today, gathering in parking lots in the hope of a day’s laboring.
The Old Testament
To see the beginnings of a different evaluation of the human person, we need now to turn for a look at the Judaism from which Jesus and Paul came . The vocabulary of the OT exposes factors that lie at the root of destitution. A Hebrew word, ebyon, used more than sixty times has a fairly wide meaning covering those in need for various reasons, (Deut. 15.7-11; Job 29.16); a word, (ani), used almost as frequently, however, has a distinct emphasis on poverty resulting from oppression by the powerful and rich (Ps. 35.10; Isa. 3.14-15). A major cause of poverty was, and still is largely, beyond human control: the vagaries of climate resulting in famines, and the ravages of epidemics (though, of course, with greater human concern and effort, the effects of these could, in the 21st century, be dramatically reduced). A second cause was, and certainly still is (very much, however,) under human control: human ill-will, greed, aggression and power-seeking, (the bible lumps these together as sin, not perhaps all that PC, but more accurate than something like “compassion impaired”). Very often in both the Old and New testaments there is a polarity between the rich and the poor: the rich are castigated for idleness, luxury, and greed, and the poor are seen as of special concern to Yahweh. A careful reading suggests that the main condemnation of the rich is not primarily their wealth but their misuse of power. After one of the earliest and most damning indictments of the rich, Amos concludes, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”. (5.24). Many Americans know this verse because it was often used by Martin Luther King.
Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament
When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition; both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur: the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor” (period). This is not an exhaustive list but it indicates the prevalence of the issue for the earliest followers of Jesus.
Poverty in Church History
Christian history produced movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’; from the end of the second century, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century and the heated discussions of the Reformation period. Calvin’s mediating comment on Acts 16.15 is worth quoting:
“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[But] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198)
Central to the polarizations of society is the issue of power, and the New Testament approach is clear. Authority justly exercised is to be obeyed (Rom. 13.1), but the radical nature of the gospel is seen in a saying like Mark 10.43 where Jesus contrasts the normal exercise of power with what is to be the norm in the Christian community. There was to be no “lording it” over one another; “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”. The fourth gospel depicts this saying in a dramatic scene: Jesus acts as a slave and washes the disciples' feet. The New Testament, it seems, unambiguously suggests that the Christian is called to follow Jesus by embracing the status of a slave, accepting powerlessness and placing total faith in God. Clearly, the following centuries were to see a great deal of re-interpreting to enable the church to live in “last times” which were to be measured in millennia rather than in decades. Nowhere is this more crucial than in dealing with ethical issues.
Contemporary Poverty
Whether the poor will always be with us is susceptible of an answer in the light of several revolutions in the last century and a half: the Industrial, the Green, and Information revolutions to name a few. Given the will and given the compassion poverty could be removed, but, in fact, we live in a nation of immense wealth where the number of those below the poverty line increases every year. “We can do good things for the poor whenever we wish” seems to be a part of Jesus’ saying that has got lost.
In fairness, it must be noted that since the Industrial revolution, the churches have often been in the forefront of those demanding social responsibility from governments. A good early example is the influence of the Christian Socialist movement (F.D. Maurice, Charles Gore, Scott Holland and B.F. Westcott); they produced a powerful critique of the capitalist system, and one important result of their work was the report of a committee set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christianity and Industrial Problems. Published in 1918, the report called for “a living wage, action to deal with unemployment and casual labour schemes, cooperation between employers and workers, extensions of municipal services, restrictions on profits and a housing programme”.
Conservatives Perpetuate Poverty
Doubtless the Archbishop’s committee Report horrified the wealthy members of the ECUSA of the time. Still, in the 1930s Keynes’ work (whether by direct influence or a kind of osmosis) produced the economic theory and policy tools that enabled many of the ideas of the Report to become part of the modern state’s approach to social responsibility. In spite of much rhetoric to the contrary, even the USA has incorporated many of these ideas. It is clear, though, that Conservative politicians do not like social programs, would not be sorry for Social Security to collapse (by using all its surpluses for military expenditure?) and are continually eroding Medicare benefits (note current plans to reduce payments to Doctors – see AMA Web Site)
Further, in certain strands of Christianity (which are usually also politically Conservative), a doctrine of Providence, which at one time was more or less universal, is still powerful. In the 19th century, as the horrors of the industrial revolution became known, various groups entered the fray. Among the first were the English Evangelicals; a group known as the Clapham Sect mounted campaigns for the reform of prisons and the regulation of child labor, but held firmly to a view that divine Providence orders the economy, and that the good are rewarded and the bad punished. Handouts were frowned on except for a sub-class known as the “deserving poor”. The more extreme evangelicals did not hesitate to interpret economic crises and natural disasters, (like outbreaks of cholera, frequent in the first half of the 19th century,) as God’s judgment, just as their successors see God’s punishment in AIDs and the hurricane Katrina.
Unhappily such views are still widely current among the far religious right with some mega- churches trumpeting as the Christian blessing the acquisition of great wealth, a kind of anti-asceticism, which can rest happily in the thought that the poor are always (to be) with us.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Metaphor of God Incarnate by John Hick
I have always found John Hick an invigorating author: the first book of his I read was Evil and the God of Love, published in 1966. The author of an article on Hick in Wikipedia writes, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hick),
“This was the first of Hick's books to have a dramatic and controversial impact on evangelical Christendom, chiefly for its concluding that there can be no such thing as Hell (as traditionally defined)…..Aside from evangelicals and Catholics, most leading theologians have not found a way to defeat Hick's argument.”
The Myth of God Incarnate & Metaphor of God Incarnate
Little that Hick has written since has endeared him to Biblical and Dogmatic fundamentalists. Perhaps the biggest outcry followed the publication of a collection of essays in 1977, The Myth of God Incarnate. Hick comments on the uproar in the first chapter of a later book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, first published in 1993 and recently re-issued with two new chapters. Looking back at the storm produced by the Myth book, Hick writes:
“what strikes me most now…is how strongly and even frenetically polemical it was….[A]t the Anglican Synod [i.e. of the Church of England] the authors of the book were likened to ‘German Christians’ who supported Hitler; the Church Times’ headline was ‘Seven Against Christ’”.
What immediately struck me as I re-read this passage after many years were the parallels between the Reception of the Myth book and Essays and Reviews, published in 1851. Basil Willey, a delightful and neglected author, wrote of the reaction to the publication of Essays:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy [XXXIX Articles, Baptismal regeneration]; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Nineteenth Century Studies , 137).
Trinitarian & Christological Issues
Central to the furor in 1851 and again in 1977, anyway from the Anglican perspective, was the issue of the Incarnation. John Barton, writing about biblical studies in the 19th century C. of E., writes, “When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (Biblical Interpretation p. 59).
In the Preface to this new edition of The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick says, “This book was first published twelve years ago. Since then the focus of much theological discussion has moved from christology to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is partly because theology always does go the rounds of traditional topics – creation, sin, incarnation, atonement, Trinity, church, heaven and hell.” (xi). As I typed this I wondered about the lower case of all the topics but the trinity and was amused when the spell check tried to make me change christology and atonement to upper case for the first letter. More seriously, I wondered about Hick’s claim that the doctrine of the Trinity has become central. Perhaps this is clear to someone deep in an academic environment; I have to confess that I no longer regularly read the Princeton Theological Review, The Journal of Theological Studies or The Expository Times, and it is in such Journals that the change would be clear. In the more general reading I do, and in pastoral contacts I still find that the issue of the incarnation is a center of focus. Indeed, having made the point of a shift in emphasis, Hick himself justifies re-issuing a book on Christology and continues:
“[T]here would have been no occasion for this expansion from the unitary God of Judaism to the Trinity of Christianity without the more basic belief in the deity (as well as the humanity) of Jesus. For this reason the idea of Jesus as God incarnate remains basic and foundational, and without it the concept of the Trinity evaporates’. (ibid.).
Chronologically, the drive to define the manner of Jesus’ relationship to God came first, producing several 2nd and 3rd century explanations that were unacceptable, and therefore ‘heretical”: most well known are various forms of Monarchianism, often called Patripassionism and some forms of Modalism, exemplified in the teaching of Sabellius (or what we might assume to be his teaching from rather scattered fragments). The best known and frequently execrated effort was that of Arius whose teaching led, among other factors, to the Council of Nicaea. In spite of frequent confusion, it needs to be emphasized that the issue was not Christological but Trinitarian. Some way, they felt, had to be found to put into words how Jesus was related to God. But Hick is surely right that without the already well established tradition of treating Jesus in some way or other and in some degree or other as divine, the Trinitarian discussion would not have been necessary.
The abstruseness of the Trinitarian debates is suggested to me by a wonderful Punch cartoon of the 1950s. It depicts a lovely perpendicular village church in a clearly still very rural setting. The Vicar, looking very like those who appear in Masterpiece Theatre productions, – bald pate with circlet of hair and small oval spectacles, – is leaning out of the pulpit surveying the gathered farm hands, wagging a finger and saying, “I know what you’re thinking. Patripassionism!”.
Centrality of Biblical Interpretation
Surrounded by ideologues wearing bracelets inscribed WWJD (or is it “have said”?), one is reminded that lying further back behind the Trinitarian discussions and the Christological controversies is the issue of the status of written holy books. And this, of course, is not only a matter of the Judaeo-Christian collection. Among the many conservative reactions to the Myth of God Incarnate in the 1960s was a passionate denial of modern biblical scholarship. Typical is the following, found on line under one of the many entries under the Myth book:
“Hick appears to follow somewhat conservative scholarship with respect to New Testament dating. But, what about the charge that none of the writers (presumably of the Gospels) were (sic.) eyewitnesses? Though Mark and Luke were not, Matthew and John were. External evidence dated from the late second century claiming John, the son of Zebedee and one of the twelve, authored both the Fourth Gospel and the three epistles of John is virtually unanimous. Paul D. Adams, The Mystery Of God Incarnate.
The attempt to re-establish the Fourth Gospel as the earliest and most reliable of the four gospels is repeated in each generation by the most conservative scholars (and occasionally by more main stream ones like Farmer and John Robinson), but it is a dead duck. One can only respond in some memorable words of the late Senator Moynihan: “One is entitled to one’s own opinion, but not to one’s own facts”.
“This was the first of Hick's books to have a dramatic and controversial impact on evangelical Christendom, chiefly for its concluding that there can be no such thing as Hell (as traditionally defined)…..Aside from evangelicals and Catholics, most leading theologians have not found a way to defeat Hick's argument.”
The Myth of God Incarnate & Metaphor of God Incarnate
Little that Hick has written since has endeared him to Biblical and Dogmatic fundamentalists. Perhaps the biggest outcry followed the publication of a collection of essays in 1977, The Myth of God Incarnate. Hick comments on the uproar in the first chapter of a later book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, first published in 1993 and recently re-issued with two new chapters. Looking back at the storm produced by the Myth book, Hick writes:
“what strikes me most now…is how strongly and even frenetically polemical it was….[A]t the Anglican Synod [i.e. of the Church of England] the authors of the book were likened to ‘German Christians’ who supported Hitler; the Church Times’ headline was ‘Seven Against Christ’”.
What immediately struck me as I re-read this passage after many years were the parallels between the Reception of the Myth book and Essays and Reviews, published in 1851. Basil Willey, a delightful and neglected author, wrote of the reaction to the publication of Essays:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy [XXXIX Articles, Baptismal regeneration]; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Nineteenth Century Studies , 137).
Trinitarian & Christological Issues
Central to the furor in 1851 and again in 1977, anyway from the Anglican perspective, was the issue of the Incarnation. John Barton, writing about biblical studies in the 19th century C. of E., writes, “When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (Biblical Interpretation p. 59).
In the Preface to this new edition of The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick says, “This book was first published twelve years ago. Since then the focus of much theological discussion has moved from christology to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is partly because theology always does go the rounds of traditional topics – creation, sin, incarnation, atonement, Trinity, church, heaven and hell.” (xi). As I typed this I wondered about the lower case of all the topics but the trinity and was amused when the spell check tried to make me change christology and atonement to upper case for the first letter. More seriously, I wondered about Hick’s claim that the doctrine of the Trinity has become central. Perhaps this is clear to someone deep in an academic environment; I have to confess that I no longer regularly read the Princeton Theological Review, The Journal of Theological Studies or The Expository Times, and it is in such Journals that the change would be clear. In the more general reading I do, and in pastoral contacts I still find that the issue of the incarnation is a center of focus. Indeed, having made the point of a shift in emphasis, Hick himself justifies re-issuing a book on Christology and continues:
“[T]here would have been no occasion for this expansion from the unitary God of Judaism to the Trinity of Christianity without the more basic belief in the deity (as well as the humanity) of Jesus. For this reason the idea of Jesus as God incarnate remains basic and foundational, and without it the concept of the Trinity evaporates’. (ibid.).
Chronologically, the drive to define the manner of Jesus’ relationship to God came first, producing several 2nd and 3rd century explanations that were unacceptable, and therefore ‘heretical”: most well known are various forms of Monarchianism, often called Patripassionism and some forms of Modalism, exemplified in the teaching of Sabellius (or what we might assume to be his teaching from rather scattered fragments). The best known and frequently execrated effort was that of Arius whose teaching led, among other factors, to the Council of Nicaea. In spite of frequent confusion, it needs to be emphasized that the issue was not Christological but Trinitarian. Some way, they felt, had to be found to put into words how Jesus was related to God. But Hick is surely right that without the already well established tradition of treating Jesus in some way or other and in some degree or other as divine, the Trinitarian discussion would not have been necessary.
The abstruseness of the Trinitarian debates is suggested to me by a wonderful Punch cartoon of the 1950s. It depicts a lovely perpendicular village church in a clearly still very rural setting. The Vicar, looking very like those who appear in Masterpiece Theatre productions, – bald pate with circlet of hair and small oval spectacles, – is leaning out of the pulpit surveying the gathered farm hands, wagging a finger and saying, “I know what you’re thinking. Patripassionism!”.
Centrality of Biblical Interpretation
Surrounded by ideologues wearing bracelets inscribed WWJD (or is it “have said”?), one is reminded that lying further back behind the Trinitarian discussions and the Christological controversies is the issue of the status of written holy books. And this, of course, is not only a matter of the Judaeo-Christian collection. Among the many conservative reactions to the Myth of God Incarnate in the 1960s was a passionate denial of modern biblical scholarship. Typical is the following, found on line under one of the many entries under the Myth book:
“Hick appears to follow somewhat conservative scholarship with respect to New Testament dating. But, what about the charge that none of the writers (presumably of the Gospels) were (sic.) eyewitnesses? Though Mark and Luke were not, Matthew and John were. External evidence dated from the late second century claiming John, the son of Zebedee and one of the twelve, authored both the Fourth Gospel and the three epistles of John is virtually unanimous. Paul D. Adams, The Mystery Of God Incarnate.
The attempt to re-establish the Fourth Gospel as the earliest and most reliable of the four gospels is repeated in each generation by the most conservative scholars (and occasionally by more main stream ones like Farmer and John Robinson), but it is a dead duck. One can only respond in some memorable words of the late Senator Moynihan: “One is entitled to one’s own opinion, but not to one’s own facts”.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Sermon for Pentecost XIII, September 3, 2006
St. George’s Chapel, Indian River Hundred in the Parish of All Saints, Rehoboth, Delaware
Mark. 7, 1-24
I was disconcerted when I looked at the gospel as printed in today’s insert and found that a verse had been omitted by the Lectionary framers. (See my Whatever happened to Mark 7.19?) It is verse 19 which reads, “since it [the food one eats] enters not into the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? (Thus he declared all foods clean)”. The Greek construction here makes it clear that this startling verse is an editorial comment of the Evangelist . This suggests that some decades after the death of Jesus, Christians in some churches, (possibly most churches) understood that Jesus had not only challenged a whole series of ritual actions such as purification rituals, but had gone further and had contradicted the food laws of the Old Testament.
Peter's Vision
There is a story in the early part of Acts about Peter having a vision of a great carpet let down on which were all kinds of animals, many, apparently “unclean” by strict Judaic standards. A heavenly voice commands Peter to ‘kill and eat’, but the Apostle is still firmly embedded in the old taboos, and rather self-righteously puts Jesus right on the matter: “By no means, Lord: for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean”. The voice (presumably that of the risen Jesus) sets the record straight and reiterates the point that Mark’s editorial comment makes, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. You may recall that as soon as this vision is over, Peter is called to go and Baptize a Gentile Roman NCO. (Acts, 10.1-23). Mark’s comment and this story, together with much in Paul’s letters tells us that the battle over exclusiveness or inclusiveness was pivotal in the first two generations of Christians.
The missing verse is of central and definitive importance for our understanding of just what it was that Jesus said and did. The immediate issue was about forbidden foods, but lying behind that is a vastly more important perspective. It goes, ultimately, to the understanding of God and God’s dealings with humanity that underlies any religious system. In a book full of insight and wisdom, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg suggests that two visions lie side by side in the Old Testament, (and, it needs to be emphasized, in many other religious systems). One is the concept of holiness, the other of compassion.
Marcus Borg - Purity Systems
Holiness is a central element in many religions; it emphasizes the otherness of God, the majesty and the over-arching, transcendent Being of God: but all too easily the human response is to require strict rules to mark off all that is not holy: it therefore easily tends to become rigid and legalistic.
Compassion, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the close presence of God with people, expressed in Isaiah’s famous use of Immanuel, ‘God with us’, the reading that we hear at Christmas time: compassion is not so bothered about the lesser details of a legalistic system because the needs of suffering individuals and communities are paramount.
While it is common to see the O.T. as primarily centered on the Power and distance of God, thus favoring Holiness as its central theme, it is important to note that within the collection of Hebrew writings, there is a very powerful statement of the alternative vision. It is found mainly in the Prophetic writings and begins with Amos’s bitter denunciation of social injustice, and also in trenchant criticism of the ritualistic sacrificial system, a system that is dealt with at length in the Book of Leviticus, a section of which is known to modern scholarship as “the Holiness Code”. Following Amos, a whole succession of Prophets denounces the lack of compassion for the poor on the part of the powerful: perhaps, the most complete and succinct statement comes from the Prophet Micah, “What does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. (6.8). Here the word “kindness” could equally well be translated ‘compassion’.
Jesus and Compassion
The picture we get of Jesus from the first three gospels, suggests strongly that while he accepted the vision of a Powerful, Holy God, he emphasized the Prophetic vision of the closeness of God. It is clear that he framed his teaching and actions in terms of compassion. Frequently, the writers remark that he was “moved with compassion”, and the Levitical injunction in 19.2, “you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God am holy”. Is offset in the words of Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount by “Be compassionate just as your Father in compassionate” (Lk. 6.36).
The records indicate that Jesus presented a new and radical approach to religion. He consistently welcomed to his table fellowship people who were not pure, not part of the holiness scheme; tax collectors, made unclean by so much contact with gentile Romans, Prostitutes, unclean by breaking the rituals of sexuality, and disabled men and women, excluded by Levitical regulation from the assembly of Yahweh’s people. It is also clear that this pattern of behavior was one of the major reasons for his being hounded by the religious authorities.
The Wider Perspective
This suggests that we need to look at the wider picture. A purity system was not and is not unique to the Hebrew people. Many forms of religion have food laws, caste systems, and tight legal restrictions of various groups within society. At random there comes to mind: the Indian mutiny sparked among other things by the use of animal fat in greasing a cartridge (pork fat upset Muslims, beef fat upset Hindus); the depressed status of women in Islam, Judaism and, let it not be forgotten, in Christianity after a brief period following the death of Jesus, and the lack of acceptance by “established” society of racial groups and minorities marked as ‘unclean’ by their sexual orientation. The list could be prolonged, but these examples expose the central point. It is that in declaring all food acceptable, Jesus rejects the purity system as a whole in its much wider forms of operation (the poor are dirty; foreigners smell; homosexuals are bestial and so on). Marcus Borg sums up much of this splendidly when he writes, “Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus compassion had a radical sociopolitical meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed”. (op. cit. p.58).
Paul at his best recognized all this when he wrote, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are on in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3.28). Sadly, we know that this vision has often been severely obscured in Christian history, but it is still the ideal, and calls us to resist those who fear the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching and want to cling to forms of a purity system that imposes inflexible theological boundaries, and sets up, “sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners”. (Borg p.59).
Purity Systems Now
The wider conservative evangelical scene in the US is a dismal one: its level of commitment to an out-worn purity system leads it to declare that AIDS is God’s punishment for “dirty” behavior, and some of its leaders declare that since the end of WW II uncounted billions of humans have gone to hell because they did not confess that Jesus alone is the way to God.
Nearer to home, there is a strong conservative wing within the Anglican Communion that goes back to the complicated history of the Church of England from the 16th to the 19th centuries. That whole area needs careful exploration, best done in the context of a study group, but here it needs to be said that while the positions are not as extreme as those found in conservative US civic religion, they still exhibit a tenacious hold on an inflexible approach to both the biblical writings and to Dogmatic definitions of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. Central is the rejection of women’s ministry (though nowadays that is often carefully cloaked) and a refusal to re-think the ethical issues of celibacy, and sexual relationships of differing patterns. This does not sound like Jesus declaring an end to purity systems, and I want to give the last word to our Presiding Bishop elect, Katherine Jefferts Schori, “We need to get busy about healing the world. That’s what we’ve been called to do. We need to stop focusing on our internal conflicts. The mission of the church is the centerpiece”. (Episcopal Life, Front p., Sept 2006). I would just add that central to that mission is the following of Jesus’ radical rejection of legalism in favor of compassion.
Mark. 7, 1-24
I was disconcerted when I looked at the gospel as printed in today’s insert and found that a verse had been omitted by the Lectionary framers. (See my Whatever happened to Mark 7.19?) It is verse 19 which reads, “since it [the food one eats] enters not into the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? (Thus he declared all foods clean)”. The Greek construction here makes it clear that this startling verse is an editorial comment of the Evangelist . This suggests that some decades after the death of Jesus, Christians in some churches, (possibly most churches) understood that Jesus had not only challenged a whole series of ritual actions such as purification rituals, but had gone further and had contradicted the food laws of the Old Testament.
Peter's Vision
There is a story in the early part of Acts about Peter having a vision of a great carpet let down on which were all kinds of animals, many, apparently “unclean” by strict Judaic standards. A heavenly voice commands Peter to ‘kill and eat’, but the Apostle is still firmly embedded in the old taboos, and rather self-righteously puts Jesus right on the matter: “By no means, Lord: for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean”. The voice (presumably that of the risen Jesus) sets the record straight and reiterates the point that Mark’s editorial comment makes, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. You may recall that as soon as this vision is over, Peter is called to go and Baptize a Gentile Roman NCO. (Acts, 10.1-23). Mark’s comment and this story, together with much in Paul’s letters tells us that the battle over exclusiveness or inclusiveness was pivotal in the first two generations of Christians.
The missing verse is of central and definitive importance for our understanding of just what it was that Jesus said and did. The immediate issue was about forbidden foods, but lying behind that is a vastly more important perspective. It goes, ultimately, to the understanding of God and God’s dealings with humanity that underlies any religious system. In a book full of insight and wisdom, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg suggests that two visions lie side by side in the Old Testament, (and, it needs to be emphasized, in many other religious systems). One is the concept of holiness, the other of compassion.
Marcus Borg - Purity Systems
Holiness is a central element in many religions; it emphasizes the otherness of God, the majesty and the over-arching, transcendent Being of God: but all too easily the human response is to require strict rules to mark off all that is not holy: it therefore easily tends to become rigid and legalistic.
Compassion, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the close presence of God with people, expressed in Isaiah’s famous use of Immanuel, ‘God with us’, the reading that we hear at Christmas time: compassion is not so bothered about the lesser details of a legalistic system because the needs of suffering individuals and communities are paramount.
While it is common to see the O.T. as primarily centered on the Power and distance of God, thus favoring Holiness as its central theme, it is important to note that within the collection of Hebrew writings, there is a very powerful statement of the alternative vision. It is found mainly in the Prophetic writings and begins with Amos’s bitter denunciation of social injustice, and also in trenchant criticism of the ritualistic sacrificial system, a system that is dealt with at length in the Book of Leviticus, a section of which is known to modern scholarship as “the Holiness Code”. Following Amos, a whole succession of Prophets denounces the lack of compassion for the poor on the part of the powerful: perhaps, the most complete and succinct statement comes from the Prophet Micah, “What does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. (6.8). Here the word “kindness” could equally well be translated ‘compassion’.
Jesus and Compassion
The picture we get of Jesus from the first three gospels, suggests strongly that while he accepted the vision of a Powerful, Holy God, he emphasized the Prophetic vision of the closeness of God. It is clear that he framed his teaching and actions in terms of compassion. Frequently, the writers remark that he was “moved with compassion”, and the Levitical injunction in 19.2, “you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh, your God am holy”. Is offset in the words of Jesus in Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount by “Be compassionate just as your Father in compassionate” (Lk. 6.36).
The records indicate that Jesus presented a new and radical approach to religion. He consistently welcomed to his table fellowship people who were not pure, not part of the holiness scheme; tax collectors, made unclean by so much contact with gentile Romans, Prostitutes, unclean by breaking the rituals of sexuality, and disabled men and women, excluded by Levitical regulation from the assembly of Yahweh’s people. It is also clear that this pattern of behavior was one of the major reasons for his being hounded by the religious authorities.
The Wider Perspective
This suggests that we need to look at the wider picture. A purity system was not and is not unique to the Hebrew people. Many forms of religion have food laws, caste systems, and tight legal restrictions of various groups within society. At random there comes to mind: the Indian mutiny sparked among other things by the use of animal fat in greasing a cartridge (pork fat upset Muslims, beef fat upset Hindus); the depressed status of women in Islam, Judaism and, let it not be forgotten, in Christianity after a brief period following the death of Jesus, and the lack of acceptance by “established” society of racial groups and minorities marked as ‘unclean’ by their sexual orientation. The list could be prolonged, but these examples expose the central point. It is that in declaring all food acceptable, Jesus rejects the purity system as a whole in its much wider forms of operation (the poor are dirty; foreigners smell; homosexuals are bestial and so on). Marcus Borg sums up much of this splendidly when he writes, “Whereas purity divides and excludes, compassion unites and includes. For Jesus compassion had a radical sociopolitical meaning. In his teaching and table fellowship and in the shape of his movement, the purity system was subverted and an alternative social vision affirmed”. (op. cit. p.58).
Paul at his best recognized all this when he wrote, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are on in Christ Jesus”. (Gal. 3.28). Sadly, we know that this vision has often been severely obscured in Christian history, but it is still the ideal, and calls us to resist those who fear the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching and want to cling to forms of a purity system that imposes inflexible theological boundaries, and sets up, “sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners”. (Borg p.59).
Purity Systems Now
The wider conservative evangelical scene in the US is a dismal one: its level of commitment to an out-worn purity system leads it to declare that AIDS is God’s punishment for “dirty” behavior, and some of its leaders declare that since the end of WW II uncounted billions of humans have gone to hell because they did not confess that Jesus alone is the way to God.
Nearer to home, there is a strong conservative wing within the Anglican Communion that goes back to the complicated history of the Church of England from the 16th to the 19th centuries. That whole area needs careful exploration, best done in the context of a study group, but here it needs to be said that while the positions are not as extreme as those found in conservative US civic religion, they still exhibit a tenacious hold on an inflexible approach to both the biblical writings and to Dogmatic definitions of the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries. Central is the rejection of women’s ministry (though nowadays that is often carefully cloaked) and a refusal to re-think the ethical issues of celibacy, and sexual relationships of differing patterns. This does not sound like Jesus declaring an end to purity systems, and I want to give the last word to our Presiding Bishop elect, Katherine Jefferts Schori, “We need to get busy about healing the world. That’s what we’ve been called to do. We need to stop focusing on our internal conflicts. The mission of the church is the centerpiece”. (Episcopal Life, Front p., Sept 2006). I would just add that central to that mission is the following of Jesus’ radical rejection of legalism in favor of compassion.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Whatever happened to Mark 7.19?
When I took a preliminary look at the readings for September 3rd, Pentecost XIII (Proper 17B), I noted at once that the gospel was from Mark ch. 7, and immediately thought: “the purity issue”. When I turned up the actual text provided in the Episcopal Eucharistic Lectionary, I discovered that the P.B. Lectionary did not give the full text of Mark, 7.1-23: in particular it omits what I have long considered one of the most explosive texts in the New Testament: verse 19. It reads, “because it [the food one eats] does not enter into [the] his heart but into the stomach, and thence into the sewer”. [The Greek αφεδρων (afedron) was probably in Koiné, much stronger, perhaps, s--t house]. And then we come to the time bomb, an editorial comment of Mark’s, “(thus he declared all meats clean)”. NRSV.
It occurred to me that the Common Lectionary might have corrected this egregious omission, but once again I was disappointed.
In the earlier part of this chapter the lectionary framers also leave out verses 9-13, a pericope that gives an example of substituting human regulations for the divine law. The law in question is, “honor your father and your mother”, and Mark records that Jesus refers to a later tradition about the use of “Corban”. Altogether this is an obscure passage on which too much ink has been expended, and an argument can be made in favor of editing it out; even so, there is also good reason for leaving in obscure passages, at least to remind us about the gaps in our knowledge of the historical situation of Jesus’ time. But when one comes to verse 19 what justification can be produced for excision?
Two possible reasons
Is it, perhaps, that Jesus could not have mentioned anything so indelicate as an earth closet (which one assumes was the height of luxury in First Century Palestine)? Anyone who has tried in Education classes to get people to consider Jesus having diarrhea, cursing at a septic blister on his foot, or even perhaps, suffering from ED (I haven’t tried this one yet) will know the shocked responses one is likely to get.
If the reason is not some deeply buried Christological heresy which discounts the humanity of Jesus, could it be that the fear of criticizing anything in Judaism in the first century CE is now likely to be read as anti-semitic? This ought not to be the case, because what is at issue here is Jesus’ wholesale criticism of purity systems, which flourish in all religions be they Eastern or Western; and certainly Christianity cannot be exempted from that generalization, except, perhaps for a brief period in its earliest days. Whatever the reason for the truncated reading, it has the effect of blunting Jesus’ trenchant criticism of the human tendency to set up barriers (like social classes or caste systems), to encourage attitudes of superiority (as in racism) and, in general, to enable those in power to control the "lower orders".
Purity Systems
It is widely accepted that one of the major reasons for the opposition to Jesus’ teaching and practice was the way he welcomed people indiscriminately to eat with him and his disciples. Such intercourse with “impure” people was not that of an accredited Rabbi, and our missing verse might suggest that Jesus went even further: Mark’s editorial comment suggests a firm tradition that Jesus rejected the food laws. Acts 10.9 ff and the somewhat confusing “decree” of the Council about admitting Gentiles (ch. 15) indicate that it was not long before the early community broke away from at least this aspect of the purity system, though Paul’s letters, and especially Galatians 2.11 ff., show an on-going struggle between exclusive and inclusive policies.
This dietary liberation, in general, has continued throughout the history of the church. A second breach of the purity system, however, has not. The evidence has mounted during recent decades that women had a very different status in early Christianity than was the case in Judaism, and, unhappily, became the case again as the 2nd century C.E. progressed. Galatians 3.28 – “there is no longer male or female” is little short of incredible, coming from a conservative converted Rabbi, but, sadly, it was a view that did not survive the church’s absorption into the Roman Empire.
In chapter 3 of Meeting Jesus again for the First Time, Marcus Borg has some excellent reflections on the ramifications of the contemporary purity system of Jesus’ time and his trenchant attack on it. (HarperCollins Paperback,1995). He writes, “The same hermeneutical struggle [reading scripture as an holiness code or as a pattern of compassion] goes on in the church today. In parts of the church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity”, and, he continues, “draw sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners…An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of compassion, not purity”. (Borg p. 59).
Let us hope that the Lectionary framers left out Mark 7.19 in a fit of absent-mindedness and not as a contribution to the hermeneutical struggle. (I assume one can discount the presence of crypto-monophysites?)
A Footnote
Careful readers of these verses in Mark chapter 7 will have doubtless noticed that verse 16 is not mentioned: not surprisingly because the best MSS of the N.T. omit it. You will find it in the KJV (“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear”), but not in the NRSV which goes from verse 15 to 17. The verse has a very large number of MS witnesses, all belonging to what is generally known as the Koiné text (later called the Textus Receptus), and this is a shining example that in textual criticism, there is not safety in numbers since a wrongly inserted verse in an early copy may well be copied by hundreds of scribes. Of course, this particular verse is neither here nor there; the ruckus over Westcott and Hort’s Revised text of 1881 and 1885 centered on texts like I John 5.7-8, the comma Joaneum: it was the omission of the only unambiguous reference to the Trinity in the whole N.T. (and, of course, other sensitive texts) that produced a state of near apoplexy in men like Dean Burgeon.
In closing, a footnote to a footnote: in the KJV “if any man” in the Greek is ei tis. This ‘indefinite pronoun’ has the same form for the masculine and feminine. Interestingly, modern versions continue to translate tis as “man” in many instances where “anyone” would be more accurate. Purity system, anyone?
It occurred to me that the Common Lectionary might have corrected this egregious omission, but once again I was disappointed.
In the earlier part of this chapter the lectionary framers also leave out verses 9-13, a pericope that gives an example of substituting human regulations for the divine law. The law in question is, “honor your father and your mother”, and Mark records that Jesus refers to a later tradition about the use of “Corban”. Altogether this is an obscure passage on which too much ink has been expended, and an argument can be made in favor of editing it out; even so, there is also good reason for leaving in obscure passages, at least to remind us about the gaps in our knowledge of the historical situation of Jesus’ time. But when one comes to verse 19 what justification can be produced for excision?
Two possible reasons
Is it, perhaps, that Jesus could not have mentioned anything so indelicate as an earth closet (which one assumes was the height of luxury in First Century Palestine)? Anyone who has tried in Education classes to get people to consider Jesus having diarrhea, cursing at a septic blister on his foot, or even perhaps, suffering from ED (I haven’t tried this one yet) will know the shocked responses one is likely to get.
If the reason is not some deeply buried Christological heresy which discounts the humanity of Jesus, could it be that the fear of criticizing anything in Judaism in the first century CE is now likely to be read as anti-semitic? This ought not to be the case, because what is at issue here is Jesus’ wholesale criticism of purity systems, which flourish in all religions be they Eastern or Western; and certainly Christianity cannot be exempted from that generalization, except, perhaps for a brief period in its earliest days. Whatever the reason for the truncated reading, it has the effect of blunting Jesus’ trenchant criticism of the human tendency to set up barriers (like social classes or caste systems), to encourage attitudes of superiority (as in racism) and, in general, to enable those in power to control the "lower orders".
Purity Systems
It is widely accepted that one of the major reasons for the opposition to Jesus’ teaching and practice was the way he welcomed people indiscriminately to eat with him and his disciples. Such intercourse with “impure” people was not that of an accredited Rabbi, and our missing verse might suggest that Jesus went even further: Mark’s editorial comment suggests a firm tradition that Jesus rejected the food laws. Acts 10.9 ff and the somewhat confusing “decree” of the Council about admitting Gentiles (ch. 15) indicate that it was not long before the early community broke away from at least this aspect of the purity system, though Paul’s letters, and especially Galatians 2.11 ff., show an on-going struggle between exclusive and inclusive policies.
This dietary liberation, in general, has continued throughout the history of the church. A second breach of the purity system, however, has not. The evidence has mounted during recent decades that women had a very different status in early Christianity than was the case in Judaism, and, unhappily, became the case again as the 2nd century C.E. progressed. Galatians 3.28 – “there is no longer male or female” is little short of incredible, coming from a conservative converted Rabbi, but, sadly, it was a view that did not survive the church’s absorption into the Roman Empire.
In chapter 3 of Meeting Jesus again for the First Time, Marcus Borg has some excellent reflections on the ramifications of the contemporary purity system of Jesus’ time and his trenchant attack on it. (HarperCollins Paperback,1995). He writes, “The same hermeneutical struggle [reading scripture as an holiness code or as a pattern of compassion] goes on in the church today. In parts of the church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity”, and, he continues, “draw sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners…An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of compassion, not purity”. (Borg p. 59).
Let us hope that the Lectionary framers left out Mark 7.19 in a fit of absent-mindedness and not as a contribution to the hermeneutical struggle. (I assume one can discount the presence of crypto-monophysites?)
A Footnote
Careful readers of these verses in Mark chapter 7 will have doubtless noticed that verse 16 is not mentioned: not surprisingly because the best MSS of the N.T. omit it. You will find it in the KJV (“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear”), but not in the NRSV which goes from verse 15 to 17. The verse has a very large number of MS witnesses, all belonging to what is generally known as the Koiné text (later called the Textus Receptus), and this is a shining example that in textual criticism, there is not safety in numbers since a wrongly inserted verse in an early copy may well be copied by hundreds of scribes. Of course, this particular verse is neither here nor there; the ruckus over Westcott and Hort’s Revised text of 1881 and 1885 centered on texts like I John 5.7-8, the comma Joaneum: it was the omission of the only unambiguous reference to the Trinity in the whole N.T. (and, of course, other sensitive texts) that produced a state of near apoplexy in men like Dean Burgeon.
In closing, a footnote to a footnote: in the KJV “if any man” in the Greek is ei tis. This ‘indefinite pronoun’ has the same form for the masculine and feminine. Interestingly, modern versions continue to translate tis as “man” in many instances where “anyone” would be more accurate. Purity system, anyone?
Friday, August 11, 2006
Reflections on a “State of War”
In an effort to clean up old files, I came upon this piece I had written almost five years ago; I cannot remember now what I intended to do with it, but I apparently did nothing. It seems that I wrote everything but the final few paragraphs on September 18, 2001, and added the ending about three weeks later. My efforts at crystal ball gazing may well raise a laugh, but remember, as our C .in C. frequently reminds us, “we are in this for the long haul".
One week after the fall of the Trade Towers I wrote:
As President Bush’s pronouncements get more militant and abrasive,
it might be worth trying to prepare ourselves psychologically for living in a ‘state of war’ for a prolonged period.
The Munich Crisis
I feel that my experience enables me to suggest some factors that we need to get used to. I was twelve when Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the British people on September 3, 1939 telling us that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. Of course, this did not come out of the blue. For several years, our newspapers had been full of the terrible scenes from Spain, and one year before, at the Munich crisis, I had seen trenches being dug as I made my way to school, only to find that our main assembly hall had been opened as a gas mask distribution centre. Moreover, unlike many, our family had also had early warning. My father was a Commander in the Royal Navy and had been on the retired list since 1922 when massive cuts were made in the armed forces; he had been recalled to active duty as early as April, 1939. By the time Chamberlain spoke, he was in Istanbul wearing civilian clothes, (complete with a cover story about a trade delegation), on his way to Basra (Iraq) to set up a section of the Naval Control Service (RNCS), the convoy control system that was already in place when hostilities began.
The Phony War
Even in the first few months, when the Allies sat behind the Maginot Line and the Germans behind the Siegfried line, the period called the “phony war”, much changed. We all had ration books, but at that stage there were not too many serious shortages; so far as I recall, the butter ration was still a whopping 4 oz. per person for a week (it was to go down to one ounce together with 4 ounces of margarine by 1942). At first, too, the ration book was a relatively simple document, covering meat, eggs, fat, sugar and a few other things. From the start, the meat ration was governed not be weight but by a fixed amount of money you might spend. This meant that if you wanted, you could blow the whole ration on one small Delmonico steak (or whatever the butcher in the UK then called it), or you could buy several pounds of lamb shank for stews. It made shopping a much longer affair since a whole series of little squares had to be clipped out (no perforations) of the appropriate page. Then the little buff colored books, one for each member of the family) had to be put safely away – losing a ration book was at least the equivalent of losing a major credit card today.
As a day boy at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Royal Charter given in 1561, two things were very obvious and extremely irksome. The first was the omnipresence of one’s gas mask, which had to be, carried everywhere. The civilian masks were a rather primitive affair, there being no valve system. When you inhaled, the air came through the filter and the rubber mask pulled close to your cheeks. As you exhaled, the air escaped out of the sides, making the kind of rude noises that reduced pre adolescent boys to uncontrolled laughter. Each gas mask was issued in a flimsy cardboard box about nine inches by seven by seven. Naturally they did not last any time at all, and very quickly, metal boxes with shoulder straps were on sale, khaki in color with GAS MASK stenciled on them. The father of one of my best friends ran a small factory in Mansfield that made decorative containers for biscuits and cakes, and he was turning out the new mask carriers within a week.
The second most obtrusive thing for someone who lived around eight miles from the school was the blackout. As the Michaelmas Term (Fall Term) wore on, it was getting dark by 4.30 p.m., and this meant that any after-school activity involved a walk across a totally darkened town, often feeling for the curb with one’s foot. This was followed by a longish wait and a half hour’s ride on a very dimly lighted and overcrowded bus, though, in retrospect, the buses were just normally overcrowded at that stage: it was not until 1940-41 that a bus designed to carry 35 passengers regularly carried 60. This kind of total overcrowding prevented the cooperative homework sessions with books spread out over several seats which had been a normal pattern of the thirty minute ride home. I suppose we sailed close to the honor code (though, of course, being British, it wasn’t actually in writing) but it provided a bit of extra free time before bed was decreed.
As the war progressed, rationing became stricter and stricter. Many foods, particularly imported fruit disappeared. The last banana I ate must have been around the end of 1939; I did not see another one until 1948. Sweets (candies) and cigarettes became very scarce. The news that the local News Agent’s shop had a consignment of cigarettes would produce a hundred-yard long queue. Clothes were very hard to get and in 1942 a “points” system was added to already bulging Ration Book. I think one had 200 points for the year. A whole line of clothes was produced called “austerity cut”. They used less material, having narrow lapels, no trouser turn ups and so on; they also used up fewer of your valuable “points”. An austerity sports jacket would use up around 120, leaving around 70-80 points for a pair of shoes. A visit to Savile Row for a jacket would use up all your points and require some help from another family member.
Petrol (gasoline) rationing began at once, and, for the first few months was relatively liberal. Even ‘private’ cars were allowed five gallons a month, the idea being that that would provide a ride to church, a shopping trip or other essential ride once a week. Doctors, clergy, social service workers had special petrol allowances. Not far into 1940, however, the only gas available was for “official” cars, a category that included all essential workers, commercial vehicles, lorries, buses , delivery vans (not luxury goods). Our family car sat on blocks in the garage for two years and then was sold to the local doctor for about 30% of its value.
Summer 1940
Of course, all this was a mere backdrop to living in “a state of war”. As France fell, and the Battle of Britain began, immense strain was felt. We were not near the coast, but there was a feeling of certainty that as the Germans landed on the beaches, massive air raids would lay us waste and waves of parachute troops would descend on us. I vividly recall cycling to school in June and coming to a whole series of roadblocks with posted sentries as I took my usual side road for the last three miles. All over the country, sign posts (the old-fashioned kind mostly, some old enough still to have a finger shaped at the end), were taken down, and it became a hazard for a Nun to go out in habit, since a persistent rumor said that that was a favorite disguise for parachutists. We were sure that the (not “an”) invasion was imminent, but were stirred by Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches, fight them in the hills” speech. I can clearly recall wondering whether I would really be able to shoot at a descending paratrooper with the shotgun that was somewhere in the house.
Soon after this, the Blitz began. Night after night sirens sent people to the shelters, and that peculiar and distinctive throb of a whole wing of German bombers going over filled the air, together with the noise of the aircraft guns and the rattle of falling shrapnel.
USA in State of (Virtual) War
Extrapolating from all this, a “state of war” for America now might be envisaged. The food shortage would not be so severe, and might, indeed, be good for America where about 50% of the population are over weight. Paradoxically, in Britain during the war, the overall health of the nation improved because a more balanced diet was possible for many who had been below the poverty line in the thirties, and even the strict rations of war time gave them a balanced, though low calorie diet.
One would suppose that the energy shortage, however, will become acute if we really are in this for “the long haul”. Again, it is unlikely that such draconian measures as I noted above will be instituted, but it would be reasonable to see a ban on all RVs, and the limiting of SUVs to essential services and certain weather conditions. Probably gas rationing, either organized or left to market forces, will emerge: a ration of ten gallons per vehicle might be necessary. If the energy crunch became really bad (a total Arab embargo, for example,) air conditioning might cease to be an option.
Of greater concern than all the material considerations is the necessity to begin to adjust psychologically to military service. If this really is to be the kind of war Bush seems to envisage, this might need to be universal and not selective. (Remember, I wrote this five years ago.) This may seem a pessimistic preview; on the other hand, things could get much worse. In September 1939, we in Britain, had little inkling of an idea of what lay ahead for us.
Of course, it might be possible to do something other than get into a state of war. We might try to do something to redress our foreign policy such as taking more notice of our European allies and of Russia. However, all this posits a foreign policy driven by statesmen, not politicians, for whom, poll results are primary. So, perhaps we had better begin to practice doing without things, and prepare to carry around with us a gas mask which will have to be much more sophisticated and larger than the one I used, carried in its tin box, as a missile in schoolboy scrimmages.
I wrote the above on September 18th, (2001) and it is now the beginning of October. Since September 18, some interesting things have happened. Bush, apparently at the urging of his father among others, has toned down the rhetoric considerably; there has been a rush to surplus stores to buy gas masks, though the experts assure us that they are really no protection, and there have been tectonic shifts in foreign policy. Voices have been raised pointing out that US foreign policy has been seen to be (and probably in fact has been) unfair to the Palestinians. A writer in today’s NYT (p. A6) reports Saif Almaskari, a former under secretary for political affairs at the Gulf Cooperation Council, as saying that people in his native Oman are not happy. “They wait in vain for the U.S. to say to Sharon, ‘Enough is enough’”. (A sense of American unfairness erodes support in Gulf States).
There can be little doubt that among thinking citizens, the issues of our past foreign policy are receiving scrutiny unusual for a decade or more. Jane Perlez, in a review of War in Time of Peace by David Halberstam concludes, “In a way, “War in Time of Peace” will be an interesting test case for Americans. Over the past decade Americans were absorbed in themselves. Now that foreign affairs have come home in the most crushing of ways, are they ready to read an account of foreign policy and its makers by one of the most astute writers in the trade? If they want to learn from the past decade, they should. If they want to think seriously about the future, they must” (NYT Book Review, September, 30, 2001 p.8).
Simon Mein October 2, 2001
And now it is almost the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Towers. There seems to be no end to the conflict in Iraq where the US has successfully deposed a cruel regime, but seems powerless to fill the vacuum thus created: the southern strip of Lebanon lies devasted, the Taliban is still able to inflict significant damage in Afghanistan and any hope of truly bi-partisan action is seen as laughable. I am not sure what I meant by "shift in foreign policy". From today's perspective little seems to have changed since President Bush first took office. Perhaps the elections this Fall will do something to force change; certainly nothing else seems to have done that since September 2001.
Simon Mein
August 14, 2006
One week after the fall of the Trade Towers I wrote:
As President Bush’s pronouncements get more militant and abrasive,
it might be worth trying to prepare ourselves psychologically for living in a ‘state of war’ for a prolonged period.
The Munich Crisis
I feel that my experience enables me to suggest some factors that we need to get used to. I was twelve when Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the British people on September 3, 1939 telling us that a state of war existed between the United Kingdom and Germany. Of course, this did not come out of the blue. For several years, our newspapers had been full of the terrible scenes from Spain, and one year before, at the Munich crisis, I had seen trenches being dug as I made my way to school, only to find that our main assembly hall had been opened as a gas mask distribution centre. Moreover, unlike many, our family had also had early warning. My father was a Commander in the Royal Navy and had been on the retired list since 1922 when massive cuts were made in the armed forces; he had been recalled to active duty as early as April, 1939. By the time Chamberlain spoke, he was in Istanbul wearing civilian clothes, (complete with a cover story about a trade delegation), on his way to Basra (Iraq) to set up a section of the Naval Control Service (RNCS), the convoy control system that was already in place when hostilities began.
The Phony War
Even in the first few months, when the Allies sat behind the Maginot Line and the Germans behind the Siegfried line, the period called the “phony war”, much changed. We all had ration books, but at that stage there were not too many serious shortages; so far as I recall, the butter ration was still a whopping 4 oz. per person for a week (it was to go down to one ounce together with 4 ounces of margarine by 1942). At first, too, the ration book was a relatively simple document, covering meat, eggs, fat, sugar and a few other things. From the start, the meat ration was governed not be weight but by a fixed amount of money you might spend. This meant that if you wanted, you could blow the whole ration on one small Delmonico steak (or whatever the butcher in the UK then called it), or you could buy several pounds of lamb shank for stews. It made shopping a much longer affair since a whole series of little squares had to be clipped out (no perforations) of the appropriate page. Then the little buff colored books, one for each member of the family) had to be put safely away – losing a ration book was at least the equivalent of losing a major credit card today.
As a day boy at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Royal Charter given in 1561, two things were very obvious and extremely irksome. The first was the omnipresence of one’s gas mask, which had to be, carried everywhere. The civilian masks were a rather primitive affair, there being no valve system. When you inhaled, the air came through the filter and the rubber mask pulled close to your cheeks. As you exhaled, the air escaped out of the sides, making the kind of rude noises that reduced pre adolescent boys to uncontrolled laughter. Each gas mask was issued in a flimsy cardboard box about nine inches by seven by seven. Naturally they did not last any time at all, and very quickly, metal boxes with shoulder straps were on sale, khaki in color with GAS MASK stenciled on them. The father of one of my best friends ran a small factory in Mansfield that made decorative containers for biscuits and cakes, and he was turning out the new mask carriers within a week.
The second most obtrusive thing for someone who lived around eight miles from the school was the blackout. As the Michaelmas Term (Fall Term) wore on, it was getting dark by 4.30 p.m., and this meant that any after-school activity involved a walk across a totally darkened town, often feeling for the curb with one’s foot. This was followed by a longish wait and a half hour’s ride on a very dimly lighted and overcrowded bus, though, in retrospect, the buses were just normally overcrowded at that stage: it was not until 1940-41 that a bus designed to carry 35 passengers regularly carried 60. This kind of total overcrowding prevented the cooperative homework sessions with books spread out over several seats which had been a normal pattern of the thirty minute ride home. I suppose we sailed close to the honor code (though, of course, being British, it wasn’t actually in writing) but it provided a bit of extra free time before bed was decreed.
As the war progressed, rationing became stricter and stricter. Many foods, particularly imported fruit disappeared. The last banana I ate must have been around the end of 1939; I did not see another one until 1948. Sweets (candies) and cigarettes became very scarce. The news that the local News Agent’s shop had a consignment of cigarettes would produce a hundred-yard long queue. Clothes were very hard to get and in 1942 a “points” system was added to already bulging Ration Book. I think one had 200 points for the year. A whole line of clothes was produced called “austerity cut”. They used less material, having narrow lapels, no trouser turn ups and so on; they also used up fewer of your valuable “points”. An austerity sports jacket would use up around 120, leaving around 70-80 points for a pair of shoes. A visit to Savile Row for a jacket would use up all your points and require some help from another family member.
Petrol (gasoline) rationing began at once, and, for the first few months was relatively liberal. Even ‘private’ cars were allowed five gallons a month, the idea being that that would provide a ride to church, a shopping trip or other essential ride once a week. Doctors, clergy, social service workers had special petrol allowances. Not far into 1940, however, the only gas available was for “official” cars, a category that included all essential workers, commercial vehicles, lorries, buses , delivery vans (not luxury goods). Our family car sat on blocks in the garage for two years and then was sold to the local doctor for about 30% of its value.
Summer 1940
Of course, all this was a mere backdrop to living in “a state of war”. As France fell, and the Battle of Britain began, immense strain was felt. We were not near the coast, but there was a feeling of certainty that as the Germans landed on the beaches, massive air raids would lay us waste and waves of parachute troops would descend on us. I vividly recall cycling to school in June and coming to a whole series of roadblocks with posted sentries as I took my usual side road for the last three miles. All over the country, sign posts (the old-fashioned kind mostly, some old enough still to have a finger shaped at the end), were taken down, and it became a hazard for a Nun to go out in habit, since a persistent rumor said that that was a favorite disguise for parachutists. We were sure that the (not “an”) invasion was imminent, but were stirred by Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches, fight them in the hills” speech. I can clearly recall wondering whether I would really be able to shoot at a descending paratrooper with the shotgun that was somewhere in the house.
Soon after this, the Blitz began. Night after night sirens sent people to the shelters, and that peculiar and distinctive throb of a whole wing of German bombers going over filled the air, together with the noise of the aircraft guns and the rattle of falling shrapnel.
USA in State of (Virtual) War
Extrapolating from all this, a “state of war” for America now might be envisaged. The food shortage would not be so severe, and might, indeed, be good for America where about 50% of the population are over weight. Paradoxically, in Britain during the war, the overall health of the nation improved because a more balanced diet was possible for many who had been below the poverty line in the thirties, and even the strict rations of war time gave them a balanced, though low calorie diet.
One would suppose that the energy shortage, however, will become acute if we really are in this for “the long haul”. Again, it is unlikely that such draconian measures as I noted above will be instituted, but it would be reasonable to see a ban on all RVs, and the limiting of SUVs to essential services and certain weather conditions. Probably gas rationing, either organized or left to market forces, will emerge: a ration of ten gallons per vehicle might be necessary. If the energy crunch became really bad (a total Arab embargo, for example,) air conditioning might cease to be an option.
Of greater concern than all the material considerations is the necessity to begin to adjust psychologically to military service. If this really is to be the kind of war Bush seems to envisage, this might need to be universal and not selective. (Remember, I wrote this five years ago.) This may seem a pessimistic preview; on the other hand, things could get much worse. In September 1939, we in Britain, had little inkling of an idea of what lay ahead for us.
Of course, it might be possible to do something other than get into a state of war. We might try to do something to redress our foreign policy such as taking more notice of our European allies and of Russia. However, all this posits a foreign policy driven by statesmen, not politicians, for whom, poll results are primary. So, perhaps we had better begin to practice doing without things, and prepare to carry around with us a gas mask which will have to be much more sophisticated and larger than the one I used, carried in its tin box, as a missile in schoolboy scrimmages.
I wrote the above on September 18th, (2001) and it is now the beginning of October. Since September 18, some interesting things have happened. Bush, apparently at the urging of his father among others, has toned down the rhetoric considerably; there has been a rush to surplus stores to buy gas masks, though the experts assure us that they are really no protection, and there have been tectonic shifts in foreign policy. Voices have been raised pointing out that US foreign policy has been seen to be (and probably in fact has been) unfair to the Palestinians. A writer in today’s NYT (p. A6) reports Saif Almaskari, a former under secretary for political affairs at the Gulf Cooperation Council, as saying that people in his native Oman are not happy. “They wait in vain for the U.S. to say to Sharon, ‘Enough is enough’”. (A sense of American unfairness erodes support in Gulf States).
There can be little doubt that among thinking citizens, the issues of our past foreign policy are receiving scrutiny unusual for a decade or more. Jane Perlez, in a review of War in Time of Peace by David Halberstam concludes, “In a way, “War in Time of Peace” will be an interesting test case for Americans. Over the past decade Americans were absorbed in themselves. Now that foreign affairs have come home in the most crushing of ways, are they ready to read an account of foreign policy and its makers by one of the most astute writers in the trade? If they want to learn from the past decade, they should. If they want to think seriously about the future, they must” (NYT Book Review, September, 30, 2001 p.8).
Simon Mein October 2, 2001
And now it is almost the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Towers. There seems to be no end to the conflict in Iraq where the US has successfully deposed a cruel regime, but seems powerless to fill the vacuum thus created: the southern strip of Lebanon lies devasted, the Taliban is still able to inflict significant damage in Afghanistan and any hope of truly bi-partisan action is seen as laughable. I am not sure what I meant by "shift in foreign policy". From today's perspective little seems to have changed since President Bush first took office. Perhaps the elections this Fall will do something to force change; certainly nothing else seems to have done that since September 2001.
Simon Mein
August 14, 2006
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Anglican Polity and New Knowledge
The Anglican church as it emerged at the Elizabethan Settlement had a distinctive polity, but one very different from continental (and Scottish) Protestantism on the one hand and from the Counter Reformation Roman Catholic church on the other. There was, and is, no powerful central authority, let alone an absolutist one like the Papacy. Furthermore, this polity has enabled Anglicans to recognize that new knowledge has mandatory implications for the doing of theology, the understanding of doctrinal formulations, and for patterns of behavior. It has enabled Anglicans to take account of new knowledge, but also to regard it as one of the ways in which God leads us.
Changing attitudes to Formularies - The Gorham Case
Two examples might illustrate these generalizations. The first is the way in which the emergence of new historical knowledge in the 19th century first caused an immense uproar, but ultimately came to be accepted by a broad spectrum of Anglicans, though, it must be said, not by all. Extreme Evangelicals on one wing and ultramontane Anglo-Catholics on the other, in general, stood aside from the central consensus. Much of contemporary minority dissent (and it is important to recall just what a small minority we are talking about in the face of continual propaganda) has its roots, I believe, in these 19th century "wings" of the Church of England.
A survey of the scene in the C of E in the mid 19th century is instructive. After the upheavals of the Tractarian movement in the thirties and forties, the church was convulsed by controversy quite as bitter as anything we are experiencing today.
First there was the Gorham case, which hinged on the Evangelical reluctance to ascribe certain "regeneration" to Baptism administered to infants. Beginning around 1847 the case dragged on for years, and, as often happens, the original dispute over doctrine was submerged in contentions about the authority of Parliament in church affairs, about the authority of bishops and the status of canon law. At one stage a great exodus of the Evangelicals seemed imminent; at a later date, it was the turn of the High Church party to organize petitions and talk about a mass secession to Rome.
One of the central issues that emerged was whether the XXXIX Articles 'over-rode' the Prayer Book concerning Baptismal regeneration. It is worth noting that the doctrinal issue of baptismal regeneration has been ‘resolved’ in typically Anglican comprehensiveness. That there are significant shades of the doctrine is very clear: that they can be held within a broad spectrum of belief is also clear, (or has been clear for almost a century).
Even more telling is the status of the Articles of Religion: in the mid 19th century they were a continual source of controversy, first by the Tractarians and then by the Evangelicals. In the ECUSA they are discreetly given an honorable retirement and reside in "Historical Documents". (For an excellent account of the details of the Gorham case, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, pp. 250-271.)
Geology, Historical Criticism, Essays & Reviews
Perhaps a clearer example of the way in which Anglicanism has coped with new knowledge is in the areas of (a) scientific discovery and (b) historical criticism.
(a) The scientific revolution of the 19th century left all the churches in disarray, but by the turn of the century, it seems that the Anglican church as a whole was coming to some kind of rapprochement and, indeed, using new insights for a reappraisal of theological dogmas.
In the 1830s "books by Sir Charles Lyell and Dean Buckland established the geological succession of rocks and fossils, and showed the world to be much older than the accepted date for the Garden of Eden." (Alec Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. 114; Penguin).
Looking at fossil evidence, Lyell disturbingly pointed out that whole species had perished, and this was almost 30 years before Darwin's book. Yet Lyell and many other scientists were not all that shaken in their theistic faith. Basil Willey writes, "Lyell himself was quite willing to profess belief in the fact of divine activity, provided that science were left free to investigate and demonstrate the mode of it. This was the formula adopted (quite rightly) by the nineteenth century of reconcilers of science and religion in general". (More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York, 1956, p. 85).
(b) Intellectual developments in Europe in the 18th century had laid the ground work for the seismic shifts of the 19th. The period of the Enlightenment had produced philosophical systems that were not all that friendly to the rigid framework of traditional Christian metaphysics, and work had begun on the biblical text as early as Jean Astruc (1684-1766) who was the first to suggest that the book of Genesis was, in fact, the product of separate traditions with different emphases, though, at this stage he merely suggested that Moses put the two together, the genie was out of the bottle.
Quite early in the 19th century, some scholars, especially some German ones, began to subject the bible to the kind of criticism that had recently been applied to other ancient texts like Homer. Not many English scholars and churchmen read German, but the few who did were either very excited by the German work or thrown into paroxysms of rage. In any case, it was not too long before translations of German works began to appear (led by George Eliot’s translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus), and these, in Chadwick's graphic phase, began to "rock the boat of faith at its moorings".
What were some of the conclusions that critical study was suggesting? It became very clear that the Old Testament was not a unity, that Moses did not write the Law books nor David the Psalms. Moreover, there were clearly errors of fact as well as statements that conflicted entirely with the findings of geology (not biology at this stage). And it is, perhaps, here that the real source of the panic can be found.
More liberal thinkers had come to terms somewhat with these with Old Testament problems, but criticism of the New Testament raised anxiety levels to new heights. That is why Strauss's book was regarded as little short of diabolical by the conservative elements of the church (that is to say, the vast majority).
Within Anglicanism, the major impact of historical criticism was Christological; if, for example, David did not write Psalm 110, what does Jesus' remark in Mark 12 imply about the limitations of his knowledge? The uproar suggests a very lop-sided view of Jesus’ humanity, and, I suspect, that the issue lies (though deeply buried) behind a great deal of contemporary fundamentalism, - a kind of crypto-monophytism. For main-stream theologians, however, the criticism of the bible has enabled a much more open approach to Christology than was the 19th century norm (a norm that, I believe, is still the (usually unacknowledged) position of much contemporary conservative Christianity).
By the mid 19th century, a gloomy assessment of the state of religion was emerging; we find poets, philosophers and novelists bemoaning the "sea of faith" retreating like the tide going out. Then, within a year of each other two publications set the almost boiling pot to run over. The kind of invective, the hurled insults and lengthy magazine articles of the next two decades make the religious controversies of the late 20th century look like a genteel tea party. The two publications were Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species over which he had been laboring for many years, appearing in 1859, and a relatively brief book containing seven essays, six of them written by clergymen and one layman, Essays & Reviews.
In the Press, in everyday social circles and particularly within the churches (which we have to recall embraced a majority of the middle and upper classes), uproar ensued that for a while muted the response to Origins. Basil Willey describes this so well that it is worth quoting at length:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Studies , 137).
The amazing thing is, that everything the essayists said is more or less accepted today, (again, of course, except among conservative Evangelicals including those within the Anglican grouping of autonomous churches). Indeed, in the light of 20th century scholarship, the essays have a decidedly conservative ring.
John Barton (Biblical Interpretation ) points out that within a few years, Frederick Temple, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and that within the C of E a cautious biblical criticism was coming to be accepted as compatible with a doctrine of the Incarnation. It was this, he says that "interested Anglicans. The doctrine of scripture, which seemed so important to Continental Protestants, was not even in the creed. The Bible was used in liturgy, and that was not the context in which to press awkward questions. When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (p. 59)
A practical application
The flexibility exhibited by the C of E in the navigation of the whirlpools and rapids of the 19th century carried over into practical ethics. Perhaps a striking example of this is the issue of contraception.
The debate centers mainly on how the "ends" of marriage are understood. The classic catholic position has been and still is, that procreation is the primary end of marriage, and that, therefore, coitus is to be engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation. A view that gained influence from the late 19th century is that the sexual life of a married couple is also central to the nurturing of the relationship. The Lambeth Conference of 1930, took a first minimal step: in certain tightly circumscribed situations, the use of contraception might be permissible (Resolution 15). [It is reported that during the debate an elderly Bishop leaned his neighbor and whispered “What is contraception?”]
The Conference of 1958 was much more robust, its resolution ending: “Therefore, it is utterly wrong to say that...intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children". This was a significant departure from traditional teaching about practice required of a believer, and it is a departure that the R.C. church has still failed to make. The contrast between the Anglican approach and the Roman Catholic highlights the difference in the polity of the two traditions.
After Vatican II, the Commission that Paul VI set up, with (amazingly) married lay people among its members, advised by a considerable majority that in some instances the practice be allowed. Nothing was heard for two years when, in 1968, Humanae Vitae was promulgated, totally affirming the traditional position. It emerged that a secret committee made up of Curia members and conservative clergy, chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani, had been meeting and strongly advised the Pope to ignore the findings of the Commission.
The bombshell of Humanae Vitae is as clear and startling a contrast to Anglican polity as one could hope to find. In contrast to the "process" leading up to, and the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Anglican approach has been open, not subject to secret committees of a particular bias; it is not centralized but allows for local movement; it allows for God's continuing revealing and guiding; it depends not on a central absolute authority which gives final and binding definitions and rulings, but on shared authority (collegiality of Bishops, participation of clergy and lay people in decision making).
Is it too much to hope that the Anglican tradition of openness to new knowledge can navigate us in the 21st century as it did in the 19th ?
Simon Mein
August 10, 2006
Changing attitudes to Formularies - The Gorham Case
Two examples might illustrate these generalizations. The first is the way in which the emergence of new historical knowledge in the 19th century first caused an immense uproar, but ultimately came to be accepted by a broad spectrum of Anglicans, though, it must be said, not by all. Extreme Evangelicals on one wing and ultramontane Anglo-Catholics on the other, in general, stood aside from the central consensus. Much of contemporary minority dissent (and it is important to recall just what a small minority we are talking about in the face of continual propaganda) has its roots, I believe, in these 19th century "wings" of the Church of England.
A survey of the scene in the C of E in the mid 19th century is instructive. After the upheavals of the Tractarian movement in the thirties and forties, the church was convulsed by controversy quite as bitter as anything we are experiencing today.
First there was the Gorham case, which hinged on the Evangelical reluctance to ascribe certain "regeneration" to Baptism administered to infants. Beginning around 1847 the case dragged on for years, and, as often happens, the original dispute over doctrine was submerged in contentions about the authority of Parliament in church affairs, about the authority of bishops and the status of canon law. At one stage a great exodus of the Evangelicals seemed imminent; at a later date, it was the turn of the High Church party to organize petitions and talk about a mass secession to Rome.
One of the central issues that emerged was whether the XXXIX Articles 'over-rode' the Prayer Book concerning Baptismal regeneration. It is worth noting that the doctrinal issue of baptismal regeneration has been ‘resolved’ in typically Anglican comprehensiveness. That there are significant shades of the doctrine is very clear: that they can be held within a broad spectrum of belief is also clear, (or has been clear for almost a century).
Even more telling is the status of the Articles of Religion: in the mid 19th century they were a continual source of controversy, first by the Tractarians and then by the Evangelicals. In the ECUSA they are discreetly given an honorable retirement and reside in "Historical Documents". (For an excellent account of the details of the Gorham case, see Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, pp. 250-271.)
Geology, Historical Criticism, Essays & Reviews
Perhaps a clearer example of the way in which Anglicanism has coped with new knowledge is in the areas of (a) scientific discovery and (b) historical criticism.
(a) The scientific revolution of the 19th century left all the churches in disarray, but by the turn of the century, it seems that the Anglican church as a whole was coming to some kind of rapprochement and, indeed, using new insights for a reappraisal of theological dogmas.
In the 1830s "books by Sir Charles Lyell and Dean Buckland established the geological succession of rocks and fossils, and showed the world to be much older than the accepted date for the Garden of Eden." (Alec Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution, p. 114; Penguin).
Looking at fossil evidence, Lyell disturbingly pointed out that whole species had perished, and this was almost 30 years before Darwin's book. Yet Lyell and many other scientists were not all that shaken in their theistic faith. Basil Willey writes, "Lyell himself was quite willing to profess belief in the fact of divine activity, provided that science were left free to investigate and demonstrate the mode of it. This was the formula adopted (quite rightly) by the nineteenth century of reconcilers of science and religion in general". (More Nineteenth Century Studies, New York, 1956, p. 85).
(b) Intellectual developments in Europe in the 18th century had laid the ground work for the seismic shifts of the 19th. The period of the Enlightenment had produced philosophical systems that were not all that friendly to the rigid framework of traditional Christian metaphysics, and work had begun on the biblical text as early as Jean Astruc (1684-1766) who was the first to suggest that the book of Genesis was, in fact, the product of separate traditions with different emphases, though, at this stage he merely suggested that Moses put the two together, the genie was out of the bottle.
Quite early in the 19th century, some scholars, especially some German ones, began to subject the bible to the kind of criticism that had recently been applied to other ancient texts like Homer. Not many English scholars and churchmen read German, but the few who did were either very excited by the German work or thrown into paroxysms of rage. In any case, it was not too long before translations of German works began to appear (led by George Eliot’s translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus), and these, in Chadwick's graphic phase, began to "rock the boat of faith at its moorings".
What were some of the conclusions that critical study was suggesting? It became very clear that the Old Testament was not a unity, that Moses did not write the Law books nor David the Psalms. Moreover, there were clearly errors of fact as well as statements that conflicted entirely with the findings of geology (not biology at this stage). And it is, perhaps, here that the real source of the panic can be found.
More liberal thinkers had come to terms somewhat with these with Old Testament problems, but criticism of the New Testament raised anxiety levels to new heights. That is why Strauss's book was regarded as little short of diabolical by the conservative elements of the church (that is to say, the vast majority).
Within Anglicanism, the major impact of historical criticism was Christological; if, for example, David did not write Psalm 110, what does Jesus' remark in Mark 12 imply about the limitations of his knowledge? The uproar suggests a very lop-sided view of Jesus’ humanity, and, I suspect, that the issue lies (though deeply buried) behind a great deal of contemporary fundamentalism, - a kind of crypto-monophytism. For main-stream theologians, however, the criticism of the bible has enabled a much more open approach to Christology than was the 19th century norm (a norm that, I believe, is still the (usually unacknowledged) position of much contemporary conservative Christianity).
By the mid 19th century, a gloomy assessment of the state of religion was emerging; we find poets, philosophers and novelists bemoaning the "sea of faith" retreating like the tide going out. Then, within a year of each other two publications set the almost boiling pot to run over. The kind of invective, the hurled insults and lengthy magazine articles of the next two decades make the religious controversies of the late 20th century look like a genteel tea party. The two publications were Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species over which he had been laboring for many years, appearing in 1859, and a relatively brief book containing seven essays, six of them written by clergymen and one layman, Essays & Reviews.
In the Press, in everyday social circles and particularly within the churches (which we have to recall embraced a majority of the middle and upper classes), uproar ensued that for a while muted the response to Origins. Basil Willey describes this so well that it is worth quoting at length:
The book [Essays & Reviews] "slipped unobtrusively from the press, yet within a year of its publication the orthodox English world was convulsed with indignation and panic. The Protestant religion, as by law established, had weathered the Gunpowder Plot and the Popish Plot [reintroduction of R.C. hierarchy in Britain]; it had survived the Reform Bill [1832], the Tracts for Times [catholic revival in Oxford], the Hampden case ... [Regius professor, attacked by Newman and other ultra conservatives; censured, but later made Bishop of Hereford whereat the whole clamor began again] ... and the Gorham controversy; but here was something still more alarming - a conspiracy of clergymen to blow up the church from within. Cries of horror, grief and pain rang from the press and the pulpit; the Bishops protested; the Court of Arches and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council came into action. The authors of the book were denounced as 'Septem Contra Christum', the seven extinguishers of the seven lamps of the Apocalypse'". (Studies , 137).
The amazing thing is, that everything the essayists said is more or less accepted today, (again, of course, except among conservative Evangelicals including those within the Anglican grouping of autonomous churches). Indeed, in the light of 20th century scholarship, the essays have a decidedly conservative ring.
John Barton (Biblical Interpretation ) points out that within a few years, Frederick Temple, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, and that within the C of E a cautious biblical criticism was coming to be accepted as compatible with a doctrine of the Incarnation. It was this, he says that "interested Anglicans. The doctrine of scripture, which seemed so important to Continental Protestants, was not even in the creed. The Bible was used in liturgy, and that was not the context in which to press awkward questions. When controversy broke out it was usually because the doctrine of the Incarnation seemed threatened, or because clergy were not expected to question doctrine". (p. 59)
A practical application
The flexibility exhibited by the C of E in the navigation of the whirlpools and rapids of the 19th century carried over into practical ethics. Perhaps a striking example of this is the issue of contraception.
The debate centers mainly on how the "ends" of marriage are understood. The classic catholic position has been and still is, that procreation is the primary end of marriage, and that, therefore, coitus is to be engaged in for the sole purpose of procreation. A view that gained influence from the late 19th century is that the sexual life of a married couple is also central to the nurturing of the relationship. The Lambeth Conference of 1930, took a first minimal step: in certain tightly circumscribed situations, the use of contraception might be permissible (Resolution 15). [It is reported that during the debate an elderly Bishop leaned his neighbor and whispered “What is contraception?”]
The Conference of 1958 was much more robust, its resolution ending: “Therefore, it is utterly wrong to say that...intercourse ought not to be engaged in except with the willing intention of children". This was a significant departure from traditional teaching about practice required of a believer, and it is a departure that the R.C. church has still failed to make. The contrast between the Anglican approach and the Roman Catholic highlights the difference in the polity of the two traditions.
After Vatican II, the Commission that Paul VI set up, with (amazingly) married lay people among its members, advised by a considerable majority that in some instances the practice be allowed. Nothing was heard for two years when, in 1968, Humanae Vitae was promulgated, totally affirming the traditional position. It emerged that a secret committee made up of Curia members and conservative clergy, chaired by Cardinal Ottaviani, had been meeting and strongly advised the Pope to ignore the findings of the Commission.
The bombshell of Humanae Vitae is as clear and startling a contrast to Anglican polity as one could hope to find. In contrast to the "process" leading up to, and the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Anglican approach has been open, not subject to secret committees of a particular bias; it is not centralized but allows for local movement; it allows for God's continuing revealing and guiding; it depends not on a central absolute authority which gives final and binding definitions and rulings, but on shared authority (collegiality of Bishops, participation of clergy and lay people in decision making).
Is it too much to hope that the Anglican tradition of openness to new knowledge can navigate us in the 21st century as it did in the 19th ?
Simon Mein
August 10, 2006
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