Ephraim Radner on the Communion Covenant and the Primate's Communique

If it hasn't been obvious to my readers yet, I'm taking a bit of a Lenten break from blogging; not an absolute "fast" mind you, just a rest. Meanwhile enjoy this article by Ephriam Radner, of whom I am a big fan. Biretta tip to T-1-9.

+++++++++++++++++++

(Based on a talk to the clergy of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, February, 2007).

The Proposed Covenant recently commended by the Primates to the Communion for study and response deserves serious discussion, not only with regards to its particulars, but more importantly, with regard to its larger purpose and character. However critical may be the recommendations of the Primates with regard to TEC in their Tanzania Communiqué, it is essential to see these as but the outline for an “interim” arrangement until the Covenant itself will be finalized and accepted or rejected by individual churches. It is possible, of course, that Lambeth ’08 will choose a different path forward, but I believe this is unlikely. For the present it appears clear: the Covenant frames the Communiqué. This is crucial to understand, because it tells us something about how we are invited to approach the entire calling as a Communion that we have been given in this difficult time.

My hope below is to bring some of the contours of this calling into profile through a reflection on the Proposed Covenant that is now before us all. Although I was personally party to its drafting, my remarks – except where purely descriptive of working details or others explicit on the matter – explain my own views, not some grand vision now formally ensconced in the Communion’s articulated self-identity. The Covenant is “before” us; it is not yet accepted. However, one of my main hopes here is to argue that it is before us because, in a real sense, it is “already” beneath us, upholding much of our life and directing many of our struggles now for some time. I will therefore talk about the Covenant primarily in its general meaning and historical context, and only secondarily in its details. The details follow, I believe; they do not lead this process.

The Covenant: something new?
A brief article on the recent Dar es Salaam Primates’ meeting appeared recently in The Tablet, the weekly British Roman Catholic paper. It was written by William Franklin, former General Seminary professor, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School, and now associated with the Anglican Center in Rome. Franklin’s piece was entitled, “Winds of Change”, which sets the tone of his evaluation of the Primates’ Meeting. For Franklin claims positively that, out of this gathering, there has now emerged a “different kind of Anglicanism” for “21st century”, one that moves “towards a greater interdependence than would have been imagined even a decade ago”, and that “reflects” the koinonia [or “communion”] ecclesiology of the agreed statements of the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue” in far deeper ways than might have been expected only recently.

Something new has come into view, then. Something unexpected, perhaps even amazing. And although he doesn’t address it directly, I imagine that Franklin would want to say that the proposed Covenant itself, commended by the Primates at their meeting, also represents this “new koinonia reality”, visible in its proposals for structural interdependence and common catechetical, missionary, and disciplinary commitments.

While I share Dr. Franklin’s enthusiasm for the Communiqué, by and large, in its communion-orientation even as it informs the Covenant, I wonder about the way he discerns its character in terms of novelty. Certainly, this has been the source of many criticisms of the proposed Covenant in its very identity: it is somehow an innovation within Anglicanism, some have said, an alien element whose introduction will further just the kinds of “curial” re-orderings of the Communion that will undercut the traditional autonomies the buttress Anglican ecclesial life and witness. So how new is the Covenant’s purpose and form in fact? My main argument below is that it is not new at all. It is, rather, who we already are and are called to be more and more.
Local realities

Everyone, of course, has their own take on what “Anglicanism” really is all about. And the possibility that a Covenant might actually define this for the first time in a way that would transcend personal views is, in the face of our idiosyncratic arguments, somewhat threatening. One response to the threat is simply to say that definition is itself idiosyncratic with respect to Anglicanism. The “covenant type” of Anglican, in this reading, is analogous to the Ritualist and the Metaphysical and the Coleridgean or Evangelical: each has an experiential niche out of which their claims to Anglican identity are made; they speak only for themselves and dare not speak for others. I suppose that this claim is true to an extent. But not in the end.

Are “covenant Anglicans” merely idiosyncratic? Obviously, I came to my own intuitions and finally convictions about this from within the limited context of my own learning. That Anglicanism has not only a common “character” but also a substantive ecclesial and historical profile was something that was deeply impressed upon me from my time at Yale Divinity School, in the midst of a thoroughly interdenominational formation. In the late 1970’s, at any rate, one of the theological disciplines common to our education there was a program through which each student, from whatever tradition he or she came, was rigorously encouraged to discern and analyze differentials and specifics of our particular tradition in an ecumenical context, not just in a local or even national one. That was not easy in a place where Presbyterians and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and Congregationalists and others were always ready to challenge and subvert presuppositions to exceptionalism on each other’s part, doctrinally and historically. Far more explicitly and demandingly than in the setting of a denominational seminary – it is interesting to see some of the most “provincial” arguments derive from, literally, provincial seminaries — Episcopalians among others were forced to go beyond the catch-phrases of local identity; after all, the UCE was our position of default in Connecticut, and claims to a special “American” character to our Episcopal heritage struck most of our colleagues as rather lame. At any rate, I remember being assigned (by our Lutheran professor in comparative doctrine) a long paper on the 39 Articles, and being pressed to confront the history – pre-Newman – of Catholic re-interpretation of the Articles by the likes of Cosin, Montgomery and Richard Davenport. Certainly, I had to face the elasticity (not “wax nose”) of these founding documents within a reality of common life and mission, and come to grips not simply with the personal theological quirks of their authors but with the substantive realities that genuinely allowed them to think and pray in the ways they did; and the result was to lead me to a search for the deeper way in which Scripture and community functions and asserts itself in our life as Anglicans.

But this kind of peculiar theological education would have been meaningless without its testing and molding by the actual shape of churches called “Anglican” in the world. For the search for a deeper ecclesial identity bore fruit in the face of the lived reality of communion as an interdependent international and trans-cultural fact in my first work as a clergyperson in Africa (Burundi). Whatever the Anglican Communion was, it came to form me deeply according to a range of realities whose character we are now being forced to articulate and confront as a much larger body – theological intuitions, however localized, cannot escape the press of the lived church.

For instance, it was obvious to me that the Anglican Communion meant at least a mutually recognized ministry and sacraments (I was ordained priest in Burundi, with trans-ecclesial permissions—something, I might add, that could not happen today with someone from the Diocese of California, which had sent me); I was allowed and encouraged to teach and form ordinands, even though I was a foreigner from another church, nation, and culture, whose stewardship could be accepted merely on the word of the Episcopal Church. It is almost impossible to imagine such trust today.

But I came to see that the Anglican Communion also moved beyond the common habitation of ecclesial structures. It meant, much further, that I depended in literal and life-providing ways upon my African Anglican brothers and sisters (from food, care when I was seriously ill, political protections in the midst of danger, guidance in the midst of confusion and error), just as they depended on my person, mind, heart, and money. We were one church, obviously, but not without challenge and even sacrifice: to live and work together, we needed to give up defining intellectual categories, habits of thought and reaction, forms of humor, even deep-seated personal commitments of various kinds; give them as a kind of offering for the sake of something more. The “more”, of course, is what is key to begin to understand, even if, at the time, it was not clear.

Again, what I discovered (albeit slowly and also retrospectively even today) was the foundational reality of what I call “formative scripturalism” within the stable community of self-giving believers as the basis for the Body of Christ’s historical energy and life. To read the Scriptures together with the presupposition of their gifted authority on our common life, even when we disagreed in our starting points, to stay in that place of receipt and subject oneself to the ultimate guiding clarity of that Scripture as it worked upon us all together – this proved the purpose of mutually recognized ministries, of common prayer, and the sharing of our hearts and hands, for these things set the parameters of our embrace by the truth of God in Christ, not surely its fullness.

To live in this kind of church was not an interesting feature of cultural choice or habit. It is simply not possible to label this a “niche” reality of a certain kind of Christian “life-style”. It was the assumption underlying being the Church of Christ, even for those who never had the chance of experiencing it in these terms. And it has underlain the life of the Church for centuries. And, far from being idiosyncratic, what I have seen emerging in our churches and Communion most recently is therefore not so much a limited agenda to be achieved to which I happen to be committed in my own personal experience, as much as it represents a confirmation of this intuited grace that I first tasted long ago precisely because I was privileged to live within the larger church itself. And particular elements of this emergent vision, like the Windsor Report, exemplify such a confirmation, not as theological creation, designed by committee under duress, but as the uncovering of a pre-existing reality.

However surprising to many, what has been emerging over the past few years in the Anglican Communion and has now been made bluntly real in the Primates’ meeting, including in the Proposed Covenant – all this is not “new” at all, but rather something only newly articulated and brought to expression. Yet, articulating exactly what? What underlying reality, divine or otherwise is now coming into view, in the Covenant in particular, even if somehow always there?
Steps towards and worries derived from the Covenant

So let me briefly say something about the Covenant’s origins in a practical sense. As most of us know, the proposal for an Anglican Covenant derives almost exclusively from the Windsor Report itself (see e.g. par. 118-120). The proposal came in the context of the Report’s recommendations to enhance the unity of the Anglican Communion: “This Commission recommends, therefore, and urges the primates to consider, the adoption by the churches of the Communion of a common Anglican Covenant which would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion” (118). Several things about such a covenant were noted in the Report, and the “draft” of a possible covenant was included in the Report as an appendix and, in a sense, a “discussion-starter”.

When the primates met later at Dromantine (2005) and received the Windsor Report, they affirmed the general idea of an Anglican Covenant (as did Gen. Convention in June, in Resolution A166). In the course of the next year, some initial work, in an ad hoc way, was done by gathering some local people in Britain to think about general aspects one might have to deal with if this idea were to go forward.

The big push for the Covenant came in June ’06 with the appearance of Abp. Rowan Williams’ piece “Challenge and Hope of Being and Anglican Today”. In this essay, disseminated as a general letter to the “faithful” of the Communion, Williams lifted up the idea of a common Anglican Covenant as “the best way forward” for the Communion’s restored integrity and future. He suggested, furthermore, that the Covenant could act as the main element by which the Communion would be ecclesially reordered (into “constituent” and “associate” church membership) through a mechanism by which churches could choose to adopt the Covenant or not.

Although the Covenant idea, first broached by the Windsor Report, had evoked some marginal discussion, it was Williams’ essay that drew out into public debate two major concerns:
i. Some have argued that any Covenant formulated in the present circumstances of the Communion would be the product of conflict and a response to conflict: hence it would inevitably prove a kind of juridical document both limited in its real powers to specific “case” problems of the moment (e.g. sexuality), and would thereby also prove time-constrained (and quickly out of date). Such an attempted solution to disagreement would, in any case, prove impossible within and contradictory of the national/cultural provincial autonomies associated with Anglicanism since the 16th Reformation of the Church of England. A Covenant born of and in response to conflict is therefore neither workable nor desirable. “Communion” rightly refers to “bonds of affection”, which is a deliberately flexible and practically loose reality inimical to formulated and “binding” agreements.

ii. Second, others argued that if the conflict-oriented juridical model were to be avoided, a Covenant would necessarily end up being a “confessional” document. The problems here are at least twofold: either its confessional commitments would be too robust and detailed, and a Covenant would become intrinsically unacceptable to the wide diversity of opinions and practices within the Communion (and hence proves fragmenting in a major way); or these commitments would be so broad that the Covenant’s “comprehensiveness” would become useless definitionally, and would end up simply mimicking the condition of the Communion today as it proves itself incapable of standing for anything evangelically. In any case, Anglicanism (one group says) was never “confessional” in the first place, and a confessional Covenant would be a betrayal of its character.

Rowan Williams’ piece, it needs to be said, attempted to deal with these potential criticisms up front, by describing the juridical and confessional character of Anglicanism as historically explicated by the present demands of communion within the world. It is not enough, he writes, simply to say “we have never done it this way”; rather, one must seek a “way” for today that organizes the historic trust of the church for ongoing life. In this context it is worth citing a very important paragraph from his essay: “There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment. Neither the liberal nor the conservative can simply appeal to a historic identity that doesn’t correspond with where we now are. We do have a distinctive historic tradition – a reformed commitment to the absolute priority of the Bible for deciding doctrine, a catholic loyalty to the sacraments and the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly. But for this to survive with all its aspects intact, we need closer and more visible formal commitments to each other.” It is clear that Williams didn’t manage to persuade everyone here, but the direction of his thinking is significant.

iii. A third view, however, sought to take up Williams’ discussion positively, and aim it in a certain direction. This perspective argued that an Anglican Covenant would be useful to the degree that it was understood “relationally”, as the expression – lived and real – of how the churches of Anglican Communion “live with one another”. Many saw this as the Windsor Report’s own desire, at least insofar as the Report was received in the subsequent discussions of the Communion, and as it morphed into something called the “Windsor Process”, a reality that implied something less concrete and articulate, or less static and formulaic, and more dynamic and engaged than did the categories of “juridical” and “confessional” appear.

In any case, the Covenant proposal moved forward. A good number of responses to the idea now came in from around Communion (indeed, they had already begun to appear after the Windsor Report’s initial publication). Some were critical of the idea altogether, others were cautiously encouraging of it, others offered general suggestions, and finally some provided fully-tailored proposals. In the Fall of ‘06 a Covenant Design Group of 10 persons was chosen by Abp. Williams, with nominees having been solicited from all the provinces. The members of this group included Primates, clergy, and laypersons, men and women, from around the Communion. They were charged with meeting, reviewing the entire question of the Covenant idea in any way they chose, and reporting to the Primates’ Tanzania meeting in February.

The Design Group met over four days in January of ’07, and from this meeting proceeded a surprising outcome: after one day of intense discussion and prayer, common agreement about a way forward was reached. We agreed, in fact, that an Anglican Covenant was desirable on a certain basis, and that it was doable in terms of its articulation, again, on a certain basis. After another three days of actual drafting, the Design Group wrote a report and a complete draft Covenant that they presented to the Primates. This report and draft was commended by Primates, and it is this document that they have offered to the Communion for discussion and response.

A theology of Covenant: the Already of God’s “Yes”
What theological perspective informed the Design Group’s work? What follows is my own interpretation of that perspective, based on our discussions and on the actual documents we produced and that the Primates themselves articulated.

The last paragraph of the Report’s prologue describes the fundamental working orientation of the group: it states firmly that the Covenant proposal we would offer would not be an “invention”, but a “restatement” and “assertion” of something already “received”, and a “commitment” to an “interdependent life” already (“in theory”) and always “recognized”, that is, a commitment to a kind of life “already lived”. Likewise, the Primates themselves, in the Communiqué (29), speak of the Covenant as a “making explicit” of something already “meant”, and an “articulating” of something already lived.

Here we are given the heart of the Proposed Covenant’s form: something already received, something already lived. And before examining some of the particulars of this “already”, it is important to understand – from my perspective – that this “already” is precisely the meaning of “covenant” in a basic sense, a meaning that provides, I believe, a profound response to the worries originally raised and still held about having an Anglican Covenant at all. For unless we get straight the theological meaning of the “already” in this context, we cannot understand the particulars and their weight within the actual text of the Proposed Covenant itself.
What is a “covenant”? On a basic level, it is simply a promise, made between two or more parties. Within the specifically religious context of the Christian Scriptural faith, however, this promise is bound up with God. But because this promise is bound up with God—the God who names himself as “I am who I am” or “I will be and I will do what I will be and do” (Exod. 3:14) — we are talking not simply about a “content” to a promise, a set of propositions upheld, but with a reality that continues to be and to act. God does not say to Moses, “I believe this and therefore so should you” or “I stand for this and you also must uphold it”, but rather, “I am this and will do this”. God’s “promises”, that is, are actions over time that are joined to God’s very being. When we speak of a “promise” with respect to God, we speak of Someone promising. By the same token, promises made to God and with God are also actions lived out in the course of time and history by particular people.

My point here is that a covenant in Christian terms is about an active way of existing as a person; with respect to “promising” a covenant is, therefore, about “trustworthiness”, a reality that includes character, action, form, and purpose. And this reality takes in not only the keeping of promises, within all the changing situations of life; but also the lived reality of constantly returning to promises made, of reasserting them and (from our human side) of suffering consequences and seeking restoration for falling from our promises. Covenant, from a human side in short designates the action born of faithfulness and of ongoing “conversion”. God is constantly proving trustworthy; and human beings who seek God are constantly renewing their trust, through God’s trustworthy grace, in a process of conversion. This is what makes the reality of covenant something that snags, promotes, re-orients, and molds. Covenant is a subjecting reality across time, that catches up the people involved and sends them somewhere.
The Introduction to the Proposed Covenant makes a strong theological claim, in this regard, one to which Franklin is accurately sensitive in his judgments about the central koinonia thrust of the most recent Primates’ Meeting: the fundamental promise of God is that of “communion”, communion with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 1;3); a communion that is based on God’s “faithful calling” (1 Cor. 1:9). This communion or fellowship is the promise – the calling – and it is trustworthy, because God is ‘faithful”. Furthermore, this trustworthy promise of communion is at the foundation of all of God’s purposes, for God’s good will and pleasure is to “gather all things in heaven and on earth” together in in Christ (Eph. 1:9f.).

The reality of covenant therefore derives from this communion purpose: the fundamental trustworthiness of our lives as Christians flows out of the very promises of God, that is, God’s faithfulness in calling us into communion with Him. When Jesus says, “let your yes be yes and your no be no” (Mt. 5:37), he is reflecting the reality that our word – our life lived according to our will’s desire – flow out of the “yes” that is God’s promise to us: “For the son of God, Jesus Christ who was preached among you by us, was not yes and no, but in him there was only yes, for all the promises of God in him are yes” (2 Cor. 1:19).

This may seem very abstract. 2 Corinthians 1:19 was in fact the base verse that informed the entire Anglican-Roman Catholic Agreed Statement on Authority (The Gift of Authority). At the time, a guiding appeal to this Scripture verse seemed to many people unclear in the context of discussions of authority in general. But perhaps the implications of God’s positive promises, fulfilled in Jesus, have now found a more palpable ecclesial setting in which to illuminate our lives as churches. For in the reality of covenanting that has been proposed to the Anglican Communion, we can grasp more clearly how the exercise of “authority” does indeed enact the “Yes” of God: authority is embodied in our trustworthy words, words that always respond to God’s own faithful promises.

For the “already” that is implied in the Proposed Covenant is precisely the already of God’s promises, of what God has done and is doing, of the “Yes” God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ, his Son, and in the utter trustworthiness and faithfulness of this. And what is this Yes, what is this promise, what is the very act by which the promise is not only upheld but takes its flesh within the world and its time? Is it not this: that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for it (Jn. 3:16)? That this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and gave his Son for us as a sacrifice? (1 Jn. 4:7,10). Is this not the Yes to the promise of communion that God has made? What then, in this light, is a “covenant”, a promise, a trustworthy response to this “already” that is God’s? We must answer this question clearly for ourselves, for our discernment, decision-making, and lively discipleship as churches take their proper form only in this responsive posture and set of practices.

I had occasion recently to sit with a group of clergy in another diocese who were listing on a board what “communion” has meant within Anglicanism. It is not a difficult task or even a long list, much as I began earlier to describe my first ministry in Burundi: shared mutually recognized ministries and shared sacrament. But does this come close to describing the fullness of “communion”? It certainly does not explicate “communion” in the sense of the Anglican Communion’s fullness of life together, because mutually recognized ministries and shared sacraments are things we already share with other denominations, like the Lutherans and Moravians, and probably soon the Methodists. We may call these relationships “full communion”, but they are nothing of the sort. For if you were to push on in speaking about the communion of Anglicans, you would have to add more things: shared counsel, for instance (something realty held with Lutherans); shared money in a regular and committed fashion– here you are going even more deep (and money is always the mark of true communion!). Where is this heading? Is it not heading in the direction of what we might call “offering”, even “sacrifice”? The offering finally and even of our very lives? “Greater love has no one than this, that a man should lie down his life ” for his friends (Jn. 15:13), and I have called you friends (14), and, of course, “love one another as I have loved you” (13:34).

This is where communion leads. It leads to the laying down of life – this is, after all, the very shape and reality of God’s “Yes”. Nothing else. And the communion of the Anglican Communion is precisely that her members have said “yes” to this reality amongst ourselves. That is the profoundly missionary reality of communion, and I submit that it is precisely why and how Africans among others, have reacted so strongly within the present turmoil – they are bound to the missionary martyrs and confessors of their founding and foundation, both foreign and indigenous, and it is this “Yes”, this promise, this trust and trustworthiness – the “already” of their history and blood-line — that is their life. Because God’s trustworthiness – according to John (1Jn. 1:3) – is enacted, is lived out, in the reality of the world’s history, and in the Church’s history, in terms of a “communion” or “fellowship’ among Jesus’ followers, that communion is “full” and complete and integral only to the degree that it “goes and loves to the end” (Jn 13:1f.). This is why all covenants are “sealed with blood” (cf. Heb. 9[:18]).

So we can define covenant in this way: it is “relational” to the degree that it expresses the self-giving of God’s promising, the historical reality that “at the very time we were sinners, God demonstrated his love for us by His own Son’s death” (Rom 5:8) – this is what God does to and for and with us in time; it is “juridical”, in that it expresses the Law of God’s promising, the “commandment” of loving as God loves in His son’s own self-giving (Jn. 15:10ff.); it is “confessional” in that it articulates precisely this love – this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son – and hence it lays out the very contours of our belief, as John himself writes, that the “message” and “confession” of Jesus coming in the flesh (cf. 1 Jn 1:5; 4:3) is at the heart of communion (2 Jn. 1:7ff.). All dogma is contained herein.
And covenant is “expressive” of an already rather than “inventive” of something new, because it is in all these aspects simply — ! – a saying “Yes” to what God has already been saying “Yes“ to from the foundation of the world in the mystery of His purposes. If there is anything “new” involved, it is in the “conversion” of our lives, over and over again, like Israel, to God’s promise and promising that has given us life (cf. Rom. 12:2; Col. 3:10).

To covenant with one another, therefore, cannot possibly contradict Anglicanism. Otherwise it contradicts God himself. I cannot put it more strongly. Any canonical law, any provincial property, any theological program can only bow before this fundamental reality. That does not speak to particulars, but it does speak to what we are about.

We should also note in this light how any covenant ought therefore properly to function. I mention this, in particular, in response to those criticisms that the Proposed Covenant is too “bland” and has no “teeth”. The active character of any covenant is, as I have said, “trustworthiness”; it is about keeping promises. The notion of “teeth” is, in a sense, ill-suited to such a context. Obviously, there are consequences to promise-breaking. The main consequence is a loss of trust – something that the Primates themselves spoke to in their Communiqué (9), following the Windsor Report, as the “illness” that has infected the Communion. And with a loss of trust comes a host of other consequences. But you cannot “make” people either enter into promises or “make” people keep them. One can only acknowledge promise-keeping and promise-breaking, and live with the outcome of their choices, where trust has either strengthened a life together or its loss has torn it apart. The consequence of all good is the fruit of righteousness; the consequence of all evil the envelopment by the sinner of sin itself.
A key question in this regard, and one that is more limited, that some have raised is this: would the Proposed Covenant (or any other version of a covenant) in and of itself have prevented the current “illness”, if you will? Certainly, it would not have done so in the sense that no covenant can prevent people from breaking their word, in one way or another. A mechanism of the imposition of “sanctions” within a covenant makes of it no longer a covenant; and furthermore, sanctions themselves do not beget a change of will or engender trustworthiness. It is true that the Windsor Report made it clear that a covenant was in fact needed in order to avoid future “crippling” conflicts. But how did they mean this? What a covenant can do is to make explicit that to which one is committed, and to which one makes a promise and to the character of that promise, and therefore the character of the consequences to be expected if promises are broken. Here, I think, the Proposed Covenant is clear enough, and fair enough, both positively and negatively (as section 6 spells it out). When covenants are made and then broken – and this the Proposed Covenant describes – the fruit and reality of trustworthiness and the conversion to which it leads are squandered and slip into the waters of isolated drift. The Covenant provides a way of describing this and articulating – judging – when this has taken place. To this degree, it lays out a method of adjudication.

Finally, we can see how, in light of the trustworthy promising of covenant that binds communion, the actual “content” of a covenant, at least as I have outlined its meaning, cannot be primarily propositional, although it is full of implications that can indeed be put in propositional form (although that is the task for bishops, pastors, and catechists). Rather the content of the Covenant has to do with articulating a way of embodying the truth of God’s promises and of our Yes to them. The question is not first of all “can a liberal or a conservative sign on to this set of doctrines”—and thereby, can we test whether the doctrines are orthodox or progressive or this or that. Rather the question is “can this church keep its word in its life in communion as it says ‘yes’ to the gift of God’s own life given in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, that is to God’s actual love?”

The shape of the Proposed Covenant
So let us return to the Proposed Covenant itself. It is meant, as I have argued, to be expressive of a reality “already” present. And therefore, the Design Group adopted (informally and often implicitly) two principles to govern our deliberations and drafting: first, that nothing should be formalized that was not already at work – either doctrinally, missionally, or structurally – in our common life as a whole; and second, that the very formulations of these articulated realities should be drawn from existing documents within the public realm of the Anglican Communion, either in a longstanding fashion, or more recently. These adopted principles are the major reason why it was possible to formulate something in what surprised many people as being a remarkably, and in some minds unadvisedly, quick fashion. It is important to understand this, practically and in terms of the theological basis for it, as I have explained it, so as not to misjudge the meaning of the Design Group’s expeditious labors.

The way this worked concretely can be categorized as follows:
a. The general template for the draft was an existing proposal, carefully composed over the previous year by representatives of the Global South. It had been circulated publicly for some months, and to this we added elements of the Windsor Report’s Appendix and the Province of Australia’s publicly disseminated Covenant proposal.
b. The actual content of the proposal – its specific elements and their formulation — made use of a range of material, including the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, constitutions of various provincial churches, Lambeth Conference resolutions, Communion commissions (cf. the section on Mission), Primates’ statements, etc..
c. As for the ecclesial structures and order proposed for discernment and decision-making, we made an attempt to articulate what has, in an ad hoc way, already emerged in our common life over the past few years. This is key, especially in Section 6 of the proposal which deals with an ordered process of conciliar life that gives the Primates a particular role. This proposed structure and order is not an invention at all, as some have claimed, but an attempt to lay out how in fact (and with responsible deliberation, to be sure) affairs have been sorting themselves out. One can read Section 6 as a “history” of the last decade of the Anglican Communion’s life in counsel. This history, and its encompassing larger history, of the Anglican Communion as a whole, is, we believe, “providential”, in that it marks the articulation in time of God’s promising act. If one cannot accept this, then of course one will have a problem with the thrust of this aspect of the document as a whole. But we believe it is consistent with the very reality of what covenant is all about: God proves faithful, and our attempts, marked by repeated conversionary movements of our councils, at responding in faith embody the shape of our own growing faithfulness.

It is possible, from this vantage finally, to touch on the particulars of the Proposed covenant now only briefly, in large measure because, as I have been arguing, they are not controversial precisely in their status as “already” given and passed on. They represent a remarkable convergence of Global South ways of articulating their commitments and more Western ones, for they articulate the common spring.

There are three main topics (somewhat obscured by a faulty enumeration in the text): which could be denoted in terms of teaching, mission, and order. Each of these topics is subdivided in terms of “affirmation” and “commitment”.

i. Thus, Section 2, “the life we share”, follows an affirmation of the Quadrilateral, elaborated by the addition of an affirmation of common mission and of the foundational and guiding place of the classical “Anglican formularies (the latter of which is a part of the constitutions of a large number of provinces in the Anglican Communion). These are not listed here so as to establish a renewed Protestant confessionalism so much as they are forthrightly acknowledged as a historically accepted standard for common discernment and order, particularly with respect to the Scriptures.

On the “commitment” side of this topic, several elements are listed that range from engagement with Scripture and its authority, moral teaching, Eucharistic fellowship, leadership formation, and common life. These phrases derive from Lambeth conferences, ecumenical dialogue statements (cf. that on morals), the Windsor Report, and other sources. In many ways, this is a crucial section that cannot afford to be overlooked, for, with its earlier set of affirmations, it actually provides a framework within which the discernment of truth is to take place with the Communion, and provides a set of touchstones by which that discernment is to be measured. It is not as if the presenting quarrel over sexuality could be immediately settled within such a framework; but it would, I believe, have altered the way such a quarrel was approached some time ago had the framework been explicitly embraced. One will note, for instance, that the oft-appealed to (and only locally embraced anyway) triad of “Scripture, Tradition, and Reason”, so confusing to so many in practice, does not appear here, not because its elements are not in fact in play, but because they are ordered within a more focused trajectory of discernment and authority.

ii. The next section (4) on shared life and vocation, contains within it both the affirmation and commitment aspects of the church’s missionary existence. Here, a providential understanding of the growth of the Anglican Communion as a communion is affirmed – obviously a central claim for a notion of an Anglican Covenant to make any sense at all; and through it, the historical characteristics of the previous teaching framework are filled out on a large canvass: primitive undivided church, British origins, Reformation, and global growth through mission. This providential history was carefully noted, and its markers listed here are meant to inform the previous sections’ “confessional” affirmations and commitments.
Much of the rest of the section, along with the list of commitments, derives from existing work by e.g. the Inter-Anglican Study Commission on Mission and Evangelism, and other groups. The ecumenical context for the Communion’s mission is also straightforwardly affirmed, a fact that deserves attention.

iv. The last set of affirmations and commitments – on Unity and Common life – have already proved the most controversial. The first section basically lays out the Four Instruments of Communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury having been restored to this position!), all under a guiding affirmation of our Communion’s episcopal leadership (something coherent with our own Prayer Book’s ordination liturgy, not to mention the Quadrilateral). By and large, the descriptions of the Instruments of Unity derive from existing proposals, especially Australia’s (which, in turn, derives from other sources). The attempt here is to render somewhat more coherent the particular roles of each Instrument as they function together. There has already been some concern expressed that the ACC’s role has somehow been slighted; however, we believe that the descriptions given are accurate, fair, and finally helpfully integrated.
The real place of challenge for many, it appears, lies in Section 6 on the practical elements that a commitment to unity would demand. In some sense, this was the one section where the Design Group was required to write “from scratch”. But, as I have emphasized earlier, that would finally be a misleading characterization of what we did; for our goal was to articulate “explicitly”, as the Primates themselves said, what has in fact taken place in practice already over the past few years as the Anglican Communion has grown and faced challenges to its common witness. Our task was one of apprehending this reality, not constructing it. If one looks carefully at the order of discernment, counsel, and decision, one will see a process that matches fairly closely with actual workings of the Communion over the past decade, say, with the dispute over sexuality – from Lambeth’98 (and before, of course), through to the Primates response to General Convention ’03, the Lambeth Commission, Primates, Canterbury and ACC responses, General Convention ’06 and now Dar es Salaam.

While this process has been challenged by some as to its integrity, one of the major sources of anxiety over the past few years has less been the actual incoherence of decision-making as has the fact that this ad hoc process was, as it were, unknown in advance, and hence in itself difficult to “trust”, to find “trustworthy”. What covenanting does to this is to resolve that need, and thereby provide a common “Yes” to a way of discerning that will indeed make “time” and patience less a threat to stability, but a gift for seeking the truth in love. “We know what we have committed ourselves to, of the path it must follow, and we will be faithful in following it together.”

We are well aware, of course, that just this ordering of discernment is disputed as being somehow providential. Why, some are already asking, should the Primates be given the role of the party of appeal and the final gateway of decision-making? There are at least three answers one might give to this perfectly valid question. First, there is a practical response: someone must do this, and of all the Instruments of Unity, the Primates most effectively (in logistical terms) combine world-wide representation and coherence of council. Second, there is the response of deliberate precedence: Lambeth ’98 (building on ’88) requested that the Primates take on this role quite explicitly (Res. III.6), by “intervening in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces”; and this request derives from actual attempts in other cases where the Instruments of Unity did in fact intervene (e.g. the first Lambeth Conference, and, more recently, Canterbury’s intervention – upheld by the ACC – in Rwanda in the mid-‘90’s). Finally, there is the simple ecclesiological response: given the episcopal ordering and leading of the Anglican Church – and, despite claims to American exceptionalism here, it is enshrined in our own Prayer Book (cf. pp. 517f.) – the Primates represent, in themselves, the unity affirmed and upheld – the “yes” of the Communion – to which the Covenant itself witnesses.

This does not mean that the Primates should or would constitute some super-decision-making power, a “curia” for the Communion as some of claimed. Far from it. A careful examination of the process of discernment proposed in the Covenant makes clear the conciliar character within which the Primates would operate in a special manner in limited and exceptional circumstances. And it is this conciliar context and character, as well as their representative and episcopal roles, that distinguish the Primates’ exceptional calling from curial models of decision-making and authority.

Although there have been fears and indeed accusations that the Primates have been “maneuvered” and “manipulated” over the past few years, I believe that an even-handed examination of the actual history of our struggles will show that, despite the real passion and heat in these struggles (some of it coming from the Primates themselves), there has been a remarkable restraint and subtlety to the Primates’ own decision-making – one that actually reflects, rather than imposes upon, the diversity and discernment of the larger Communion. The Proposed Covenant merely seeks to give speech to this deeper reality.

It is the task of the Communion, through its varied processes of discussion, to comment not only on this larger shape to the Proposed Covenant, but also to the particulars that provide its content. My hope here is to have shown how both this larger shape finds its contours within a specific theological vision; and that this vision is what should inform the particulars as they are articulated.

Concluding directions
The Primates themselves have commended the Proposed Covenant for study and response within the Communion as a whole. In doing so, they have responded to the Report’s request that they affirm the draft as a “concise expression of what may be considered as authentic Anglicanism”. This is a significant action, and signals that the Proposed Covenant in its general aim, at least, is not off the mark.

On the basis of comments received through the course of this year, the Covenant Design Group will prepare a revised draft to be presented to Lambeth ’08, where it may be considered – and probably amended – for dissemination to the Provinces of the Communion. This process and timetable is important, among other things, for the way that it provides the markers for the “interim” recommendations offered by the Primates in their Communiqué.

I want to end simply by citing some words from William Franklin’s article, with which I began: “contrary to inaccurate press reports of this past week that the holy See seeks some accommodation with disaffected Anglicans, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican has now spoken of the value of the Anglican Communion remaining as one communion, as indicated in this statement: ‘It is our overwhelming desire that the Anglican Communion stays together, rooted in the historic faith which our dialogue and relations over four decades have led us to believe that we share to a large degree’” [a 2004 statement republished by the Catholic Church in a recent official summary of dialogue statements]. And I would ask, Why would Rome desire such a thing? What hope does this express that, to a large extent, we are party to, driven by, and nourished in? Is it not the hope that God’s promises are indeed shown forth before the world as being trustworthy? Not that the Anglican Communion is the single, or even primary vehicle for that demonstration; hardly – is has a calling only in relation to others. But rather, do we not all recognize that, “in a world and time of instability, conflict, and fragmentation” (Proposed Covenant Introduction), this demonstration must come and be received in the places of our failures, of our “no’s”, of this church and that church, of this communion, if ever we are one day to say “yes” to the great calling of our God in Christ Jesus to bring us into the Father’s bosom as ‘one flock with one shepherd” (Jn. 10:6)?

–The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner is rector of Church of the Ascension, Pueblo, Colorado, and a fellow of the Anglican Communion Institute

Craig Uffman Nails It! His Analysis of the "Gang of Four" Committee Report

Kendall Harmon posted the following piece over at T-1-9. I think when the dust settles, and the realignment crowd has exhausted its rant, this article will stand above the rest as the most reasonable analysis. Well said, Mr. Uffman.

+ + + +

Craig Uffman–In Defense of Rowan Williams: An Alternative Explanation for the Infamous Gang of Four Committee Report

Emotions ranging from grief to nearly hysterical anger characterize the response of orthodox Anglicans to the report of the committee tasked with monitoring the response of The Episcopal Church (TEC) to the Windsor Report. The committee report concludes that TEC responded sufficiently to two out of the three demands of the Windsor Report. Archbishop Aspinall of Australia summarized the conclusion succinctly, “Two out of three requirements were met, but more work is needed.” But in the eyes of the orthodox and liberals alike, the report gives TEC a clean bill of health.

The most common target of orthodox outrage is Archbishop Rowan Williams, whose name is on the report. “He sold us out!” claim some. “His greatest moment of shame!” declare others.
However, those who know ++Rowan’s work and character find those claims difficult to accept. There must be some other explanation. I believe that explanation can be summarized in one word: “overaccepting.”

Overaccepting is a term popularized by Rev. Canon Dr. Sam Wells (dean of the Duke Chapel and Research Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke Divinity School) in his book, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos and London: SPCK, 2004). Wells looks to the genre of improvisation in the theatre to describe the kind of ethical behavior for which disciples should be trained. In improvisation, the most important goal of actors is to keep the play going. No matter what kind of outrageous behavior one improv actor “offers,” her colleagues must respond in such a way that continuity with her actions is maintained so that the drama continues. In other words, their response must not “block” the “offer” of the colleague or the drama stops.

Wells explains that a good improvisationist always “accepts” the offer of the colleague in order to keep the action going. Indeed, they “over-accept” it by receiving that which is offered and then re-direct the action in a way continuous with the offer but perhaps oriented in a different direction. Those familiar with the TV series, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” are familiar with this pattern.

Wells shows that “overaccepting” is the way of Christ. I’ll refer those interested in that proof to the book. But Wells’ key point is that Christian actors improvise by overaccepting the offers of others in such a way that the action is reoriented in the Way of Christ. When offering pastoral care, a Christian actor overaccepts in order to help the lost re-locate themselves rightly in God’s drama.

I propose that the best way to understand Rowan Williams’ role in the committee report is through the lens of “overaccepting.” As the orthodox claim loudly, the “offer” made by TEC was plainly unsuitable in that it fell short of the requested language of repentance and promises to cease the behaviors that tore the bonds of affection. Rather than “blocking” that response by rejecting it and ending the conversation with TEC, ++Rowan continued the action by “overaccepting” the offer and redirecting the action in such a way that TEC must relocate themselves rightly in God’s drama. That is, ++Rowan accepts as satisfactory the feeble response of TEC, but reinterprets it in such a way that TEC commits itself to cessation of the offensive behavior. TEC is thus offered the opportunity to continue the story along a direction it did not expect, or to stop the drama.

I suggest that “overaccepting” more adequately explains ++Rowan’s role in the committee report than claims of perfidy. By overaccepting TEC’s offer, he continues the conversation so that TEC may remain in the Anglican drama at least until the covenant offers the opportunity for voluntary and peaceable re-structuring of the communion. Overaccepting thus redirects the drama, in spite of TEC’s communion-tearing actions, in the direction of unity. And focus on unity is consistent with ++Rowans’ theology, character, and the office entrusted to him. As Wells demonstrates, although it is often frustrating behavior to those of us who long for a martial conqueror, overaccepting is the way of Christ.

–Mr. Craig Uffman is an Anglican who resides in Raleigh, NC, and is a student at Duke Divinity School

Weather Report from Britain

I really miss English weather. Really, I do. It's not just the oppressive heat of Texas summers that gets me down; it's the fact that only the Brits know how to report on the weather with a little "class." Have a listen to this SAMPLE.

P.S. My friend, Jeff Steel in Durham, England, gets to wake up to this every morning. Imagine that! ;-)

One Book Solution, Part 3: A Table of Contents

KEY:
1662 = Revised along the lines of the Church of England’s 1662 BCP
1928 = Revised along the lines of the American 1928 BCP
1979 = As it appears in the current BCP of the Episcopal Church
1979*= Slight revision of current BCP of the Episcopal Church
ASB = As it appears in the Anglican Service Book (Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA)

The Daily Office
Morning Prayer (1928)
Evening Prayer (1662)
Noonday Prayer (ASB)
Compline (ASB)
A Contemporary Daily Office (1979*, combined MP and EP)
Table of Suggested Canticles

The Great Litany (1928)

The Collects: Traditional (1979)
Seasons of the Year
Holy Days
Common of Saints
Various Occasions

The Collects: Contemporary (1979)
Seasons of the Year
Holy Days
Common of Saints
Various Occasions

Proper Liturgies for Special Days: Traditional (ASB)
A Penitential Order (1928, w/ imposition of ashes)
Palm Sunday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
Holy Saturday
The Great Vigil of Easter

Proper Liturgies for Special Days: Contemporary (1979)
Ash Wednesday
Palm Sunday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
Holy Saturday
The Great Vigil of Easter

Holy Baptism
Rite One (1928)
Rite Two (1979*)

The Holy Eucharist: Rite One
An Exhortation (1979, ASB)
The Decalogue: Traditional (ASB)
A Penitential Order: Traditional (ASB)
The Holy Eucharist (1928)
Alternate Eucharistic Prayer (1662)
The Proper Prefaces (ASB)
Prayers of the People: Traditional (ASB)
Offertory Sentences (ASB)
Communion of the Sick (ASB)

The Holy Eucharist: Rite Two
An Exhortation with Decalogue (1979)
A Penitential Order: Rite Two (1979)
The Holy Eucharist (1979, Eucharistic Prayer A)
Alternate Eucharistic Prayers (1979, Eucharistic Prayers B & D)
The Proper Prefaces (1979)
Prayers of the People: Contemporary (1979)
Offertory Sentences (1979)
Communion under Special Circumstances (1979)

Pastoral Offices
Holy Matrimony: Traditional (1928)
Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage (1979)
Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child: Rite One (ASB)
Thanksgiving for the Birth of Adoption of a Child: Rite Two (1979)
Reconciliation of a Penitent: Rite One (ASB)
Reconciliation of a Penitent: Rite Two (1979)
Ministration to the Sick: Rite One (ASB)
Ministration to the Sick: Rite Two (1979)
Ministration at the Time of Death: Rite One (ASB)
Ministration at the Time of Death: Rite Two (1979)
Burial of the Dead: Rite One (1928)
Burial of the Dead: Rite Two (1979)

Episcopal Services
Confirmation (1928)
Ordination of a Bishop (1928)
Ordination of a Priest (1928)
Ordination of a Deacon (1928)
Litany of Ordinations (1928)
Celebration of a New Ministry: Rite One (ASB)
Celebration of a New Ministry: Rite Two (1979)

The Psalter, or Psalms of David (Revised Standard Version)

Prayers and Thanksgivings (ASB, 1979)

A Catechism (1928)

Historical Documents of the Church (1979*)

A One Book Solution? Part Two

In Part One, I stated that the Green Book was yet another attempt at (what I consider to be) a flawed strategy, and thus will fail to satisfy most Anglicans. People will continue to use whatever they’re accustomed to using: traditional folks will continue to use one version or another of the classic BCP, and contemporary folks will continue to use (in most cases) services from the 1979 BCP. Whether the AMiA leadership envisions the Green Book project to be a bona fide first step in producing a credible "Book of Alternative Services," or whether, following Toon, the Green Book is viewed more as an "interim measure" (the "bait and switch" strategy – see my earlier post), is difficult to say. However, in the final analysis, this particular “two-book” solution will simply be unable to live up to its design.

Now here's my radical idea: rather than starting with the template of the 1662 or 1928 BCP as the basis for new contemporary Cranmerian rites, why not instead start with the template of the 1979 BCP as the basis for restoring the traditional Cranmerian rites for a truly one-book result? Now hear me out, this is not as crazy as my readers may think. This plan would involve the following rather simple steps:

(1) Perform "restorative surgery" on the 1979 Rite One services (Daily Offices and Holy Eucharist) so that they reflect more accurately the text and spirit of the 1928 rites. (I would also remove the current alternative Eucharistic Prayer in Rite One, and replace it with a 1662-style alternative.)

(2) Include "Rite One" services that are not currently provided in the 1979 BCP, e.g., Baptism, Confirmation, Compline, Noonday Prayer, and the Pastoral Offices. (The Anglican Service Book – produced by the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA – is a great resource here since nearly everything of value in the 1979 BCP has been rendered in traditional language.)

(3) In the interest of keeping the size of the new BCP manageable, a revision committee working on such a project perhaps could consider excising some superfluous services and/or placing some services (e.g. Consecration of a Church) into a “Book of Occasional Services.”

(4) Redress the traditional/contemporary language balance (currently heavily weighted toward the contemporary). So, for instance, some offices (e.g. the Daily Offices and the Great Litany) are perhaps best left in their traditional (1928) forms and some contemporary (Rite Two) offices either conflated (e.g. Daily Offices) or discarded altogether. I'd also replace the Psalter with the RSV.

(5) Keep only two or at most three of the alternative Eucharistic Prayers in Rite Two. (My preference would be simply to remove Eucharistic Prayer C. Whatever is done, do not discard Eucharistic Prayer D!)

(6) Make other changes as deemed necessary to bring the new BCP in line with Anglican consensus, while continuing to maintain its comprehensiveness. (For example, include an introductory paragraph to the "Historical Documents" section that clearly states that the Church is NOT relegating these important statements to the dustbin of history.)

A radical plan? Yes, probably too radical for those who hate the 1979 Book. But it is a VERY doable plan and I think the best chance for a “one-book” solution currently being proposed.

In my next installment, I will provide a sample Table of Contents that will shed further light on what such a BCP would look like.

Is there a "one-book" solution for American Anglicans?

Once upon a time, unity around a common liturgy was a "given" for Anglicans... and then came the 1979 BCP of the Episcopal Church (USA), which, for many Anglicans, marked the end of "common worship" as a distinctive characteristic of the Anglican tradition, and the beginning of the end for Anglican unity overall. The end.

At least that's how many traditionalists tell the story. Those who support the new BCP contend that the inclusion of traditional "Rite One" services is enough deference paid to the old BCP to lay claim to continuity with it, and to satisfy traditionalists at the same time. Obviously, the detractors do not see things this way, and have ever since waged open warfare against it, and against modern rites in general, which makes the recent introduction of the AMiA's new Trial Liturgy (henceforth called "the Green Book") all the more intriguing.

However, do not think for a moment (despite my recent remarks) that the Green Book -- essentially the 1662 BCP in modern idiom -- necessarily represents a significant concession of defeat, or an acknowledgement of the need to modernize the idiom of worship, on the part of Dr. Peter Toon (the guiding hand behind the Green Book) and his followers. It is not even an admission that traditional and contemporary rites could (or even should) exist together within the same cover of some future BCP. Indeed, Dr. Toon has gone on record many times that, at most, the move to contemporize Cranmer should be viewed as an interim measure -- what I like to call the "bait and switch" solution. The ultimate goal is merely to wean contemporary Anglicans away from the 1979 BCP (and other "defective" modern rites). The beauty and the theological soundness of the Cranmerian liturgy, even as found in the Green Book (the "bait"), will do its magic by eventually winning the hearts of modern Anglicans and others back to Cranmer's liturgy and to its traditional Elizabethan era idiom as well (the "switch"). But will this tactic work? I think not, and here's why:

(1) The Green Book is not the first attempt to contemporize Cranmer's liturgy. In fact, many such projects have been attempted, and each one has produced less than stellar results -- ranging from the banal to the sophomoric. Simply put, the strategy to woo folks back to the classic BCP by introducing a contemporary version of it does not seem to work, at least not very well. This begs at least two questions: first, why hasn't it worked? And, second, why add one more alternative liturgy to the plethora of alternatives already out there?

(2) In part, the first question can be answered by noting that the strategy is built on two faulty premises: first, that taking the "thees, thous, and vouchsafes" out of the Cranmerian rites will remove a stumbling block to those Anglicans who, due to years of disuse and/or non-exposure to proper Prayerbook language, are put off by such archaic words. Second, the assertion is made that modern Anglicans only use the 1979 BCP because no better alternative is available to them. Provide a Cranmerian alternative in modern English (e.g. the Green Book), or so it is argued, and modern Anglicans will drop the '79 Book like a hot potato. Both premises are faulty if only for the fact that the "thees, thous, and vouchsafes" are not the only archaicisms, and probably not even the most imposing ones, in the traditional BCP. Issues of lengthiness, cadence, complex sentence structure, complicated parallelisms, rubrical rigidness, inflexibility, overdone didacticism, dearth of celebration, and obscure terminology certainly play their roles in the general lack of appeal to the modern liturgical palate. Yet these issues are typically ignored in attempts to contemporize Cranmer's liturgy.

(3) But there is another, more important reason: many Anglicans, even conservative ones, actually like the 1979 BCP, despite some of its flaws, even if they are somewhat hesitant to admit this to the more vocal opposition. For years we've been hearing about how baaaaad the 1979 BCP was, that folks have been somewhat hesitant and intimidated to defend it in the face of fierce verbal assault. But in actuality, as the practice of many Anglicans bears out, the '79 Book turns out to be a very versatile liturgy with many laudable features. The scholarship behind it is really quite outstanding, even if it is also quite broad. There is much in it that is appealing to modern Anglicans: its "shape," the restoration of ancient forms and rites, its "patristic eclectisim," and its pastoral tone. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the Book doesn't have flaws and deficiencies; only that the '79 Book does not come close to being the demon-possessed tome that its detractors make it out to be.

Finally, let me end by humbly suggesting that the future course of American Anglicanism should strive to achieve two worthy goals. First, I firmly believe that it is a good, right, and appropriate thing for Anglicans to seek to preserve Cranmer's liturgy, and to promote the frequent use of it, in its original idiom no less. (Despite what my readers may unduly conclude from this article, I defy anyone to demonstrate a love for Cranmer's liturgy that surpasses my own. After all, I would never dream of dishonoring Cranmer's liturgy by "translating" it into contemporary idiom.) The second worthy goal is to preserve what has proven to be laudable and edifying in the contemporary Anglican liturgical experiment, many of the features found in the 1979 BCP. Can this be done? And can it be done within one cover? Is there a "one-book" solution? I don't know. But I will lay out for my readers some idea of how a "one-book solution" might look in my next two installments.

Until next time.

Karl Barth's comment on the plurality of churches

I pulled this quote of Karl Barth from Hans Urs von Balthasar's article on A Divided Church (see below). Barth's comments stand on their own as a classic appraisal of our current divisions, and so are worthy of our consideration.

++++++++++++++++

The plurality of churches ... should not be interpreted as something willed by God, as a normal unfolding of the wealth of grace given to mankind in Jesus Christ [nor as] a necessary trait of the visible, empirical Church, in contrast to the invisible, ideal, essential Church. Such a distinction is entirely foreign to the New Testament because, in this regard also, the Church of Jesus Christ is one. She is invisible in terms of the grace of the Word of God and of the Holy Spirit, . . . but visible in signs in the multitude of those who profess their adherence to her; she is visible as a community and in her community ministry, visible in her service of the word and sacrament.... It is impossible to escape from the visible Church to the invisible.

If ecumenical endeavor is pursued along the lines of such a distinction, however fine the words may sound, it is philosophy of history and philosophy of society. it is not theology. People who do this are producing their own ideas in order to get rid of the question of the Church's unity, instead of facing the question posed by Christ.... If we listen to Christ, . we do not exist above the differences that divide the Church: we exist in them.... In fact, we should not attempt to explain the plurality of churches at all. We should treat it as we treat our sins and those of others.... We should understand the plurality as a mark of our guilt (K. Barth, Die Kirche und die Kirchen. Theol., 9- 10).

A Divided Church? by Hans Urs von Balthasar

There's much in here that I like (particularly the quote from Barth), but it's interesting to see how this eminent theologian struggles with this issue.

A Divided Church?
by Hans Urs von Balthasar
from the Third Volume of the Theo-Dramatic

The division of the Church, brought about by sin, is rendered all the easier because of the distribution within her of various charisms and offices. At the very outset the community must be warned against envy and jealousy: someone else has been given something I do not possess; but, in the dispensation of love, it is for the greatest advantage of the whole in which I share. The eye sees on behalf of the whole body, and so on (1 Cor 12).

The administration of charisms presupposes selfless love on the part of all (1Cor 13). It takes only the slightest change of perspective to highlight the special nature of a charism--perhaps its striking and attractive side-making it seem more important than the Church's organic unity. Thus parties arise, often through no fault of the bearers of charisms. So Paul exhorts his hearers: "I appeal to you, brethren.... that there be no dissensions [schismata] among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me ... that there is quarrelling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul', or 'I belong to Apollos', or 'I belong to Cephas. . . .' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?" (1 Cor 1: 10-13).

Of course, there is a difference between schisms within the Church and the ultimate schism that separates people from the unity of the institutional Church. But there can be no doubt that the former were the cause of the latter. Sin in the Church is the origin of the (equally sinful) separation from the Church. The process can last for hundreds of years within the Church--think of the long prelude to the schism with the East and to the Reformation--but it can always be traced back.

Not that this justifies the ultimate rupture. A slackening of the love that preserves and builds up the Church's catholicity is the beginning, however hidden, of all division in the Church: ‘ubi peccata, ibi multitudo.’ ‘Where there are sins. there is multiplicity, divisions, erroneous teachings and discord. But where there is virtue, there is oneness, union; thus all believers were 'of one heart and one soul'. (Origen, In Ez. hom. 9)

This raises the grave question whether, and when, the Church, divided internally and often externally as well, ceases to be a single person in the theo-drama. Two principles are crucial here. The first is that the Church, both as a community of saints and as an institution, is designed and equipped to sustain and save the sinners who dwell within her; she is *corpus permixtum* and must not separate herself from them as a Church of the "pure", elect", "predestined", and so forth.

To that extent, she has to continue to endure the inner tension between her ideal and her fallen reality, endeavoring to draw what is at her periphery toward the center. Thus the unity that encompasses her (the "net") is a principle of this kind: it can hold on to those who are estranged from her provided they have not deliberately renounced her.

At this borderline, however, the other principle takes over: theologically speaking, there absolutely cannot be a plurality of Churches of Christ; if such a plurality empirically exists, these several Christian churches cannot represent theological "persons". It follows that it is impossible, by a process of abstraction, to deduce some common denominator from the historical plurality and so posit an overall concept of the one Church; for the latter's unity is not that of a species: it is a concrete and individual, unique unity, corresponding to the unique Christ who founded her.

We would do well to listen to Karl Barth at this point:

‘The plurality of churches ... should not be interpreted as something willed by God, as a normal unfolding of the wealth of grace given to mankind in Jesus Christ [nor as] a necessary trait of the visible, empirical Church, in contrast to the invisible, ideal, essential Church. Such a distinction is entirely foreign to the New Testament because, in this regard also, the Church of Jesus Christ is one. She is invisible in terms of the grace of the Word of God and of the Holy Spirit, . . . but visible in signs in the multitude of those who profess their adherence to her; she is visible as a community and in her community ministry, visible in her service of the word and sacrament.... It is impossible to escape from the visible Church to the invisible.

'If ecumenical endeavor is pursued along the lines of such a distinction, however fine the words may sound, it is philosophy of history and philosophy of society. it is not theology. People who do this are producing their own ideas in order to get rid of the question of the Church's unity, instead of facing the question posed by Christ.... If we listen to Christ, . we do not exist above the differences that divide the Church: we exist in them.... In fact, we should not attempt to explain the plurality of churches at all. We should treat it as we treat our sins and those of others.... We should understand the plurality as a mark of our guilt’ (K. Barth, Die Kirche und die Kirchen. Theol., 9- 10).

We search the New Testament in vain, therefore, if we are looking for guidelines as to how separated churches should get on together; all we shall find there are instructions for avoiding such divisions.

While it is possible to say, with the Second Vatican Council, that "some, even very many, of the most significant elements and endowments that together go to build up and give life to the Church herself can exist" in those Christian communities that have deliberately distanced themselves from the institution of the Catholica; and while we may recognize that "men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church", this does not mean that such communities constitute separate theological persons over against the Catholica.

With regard to the relationship between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the question is whether mutual estrangement has proceeded so far that we are obliged to speak of two "Churches", or whether, in point of historical fact, unity "has never ceased to exist at a deep level" (L. Bouyer, The Church of God: "Theology of the Church").

There have also been attempts to suggest that there is a theological ‘necessity’ behind the phenomenon of schisms, ‘whether on the basis of the Old Testament schism between the North and South Kingdoms’ or arising out of the ‘primal split’ between Judaism and the Gentile world at the founding of the Church. With regard to the former split, however, the tribes of Israel had never been a unity comparable to that of the Body of Christ but a ‘confederation of diverse tribal groups’ that had only lately been united ‘in the person’ of the monarch. With regard to the latter split, it would be difficult to maintain that the Israel that refused Christ was responsible for disputes within the Christian Church; according to Paul, the unity of Christians is based on an entirely different principle (Eph 4:3 ff.) from that of the Jewish ‘sects’ (and Paul had been a member of one of them).

Precisely this principle of unity, however--the Eucharist of the pneumatic Lord--is a wholly new and incomparable principle, and this makes the initial split, which becomes aggravated into full-blown schism, to be practically irreversible. Urged by the most elementary sense of Christian duty, the ‘ecumenical movement’ must indeed tirelessly exert itself for the reunion of the separated ‘churches’. By doing this many partial successes can doubtless be achieved: for instance, the reduction of mutual misunderstandings, suspicions and denigrations.

But the fact remains that the group of churches separated from the Catholic Church has, by this very separation, necessarily gotten rid of the visible symbol of unity, the papacy, and this results in a situation in which our partners in dialogue (including the Orthodox) do not possess any authority which is recognized by all the believers and as such can officially represent these. In each case we are dealing with individual groups or bishops who regularly divide themselves into a party of agreement and a party of objection whenever reunion with the Catholic Church is contemplated. And, seemingly, the best that such groups can produce is an offer of abstract catholicity arrived at by overlooking real differences. We have already described such ‘catholicity’ as being plainly unacceptable.

However fruitful and instructive the ecumenical dialogue between Churches is, exemplary holiness will show not only that obedience to the Church (as understood by Catholics) can be integrated into Christian *agape* but that it is actually an indispensable part of the latter and of the discipleship of Christ.

Finally, while the Church's missionary task is to give witness to the world, the chimera of the divided Church shows just how shaky her self-transcendence into the world is. Indeed, it becomes increasingly precarious, the more Christian sects proliferate. Even if the worst stumbling blocks were overcome by making pacts between missions professing different beliefs, the fundamental stumbling block would remain as far as the recipient of missionary activity is concerned.

Nor can it be removed by portraying the diversity of Christian expressions as something harmless, something arising necessarily as a result of historical development, or even as something that brings blessing. To do this would simply be to obscure Jesus' original wish even more. To repeat the words of Karl Barth on the phenomenon of division in the Church: ‘We should treat it as we treat our sins and those of others.’"

AMiA Trial Liturgy

Matt Kennedy over at Standfirm has just gleefully announced the publication of the AMiA's new trial Book of Common Prayer in contemporary language, a work in which Peter Toon had an overseeing hand. The Eucharistic liturgy can be seen HERE. A few months ago, a friend of mine in the AMiA sent me a copy of the trial liturgy (the "Green Book"). So I've had some time to look at it, though admittedly it has been a bit of a chore to get through.

My intial reaction to this was amazement that Dr. Toon would have anything to do with a project to contemporize Cranmer's liturgy. Could it be that Toon has succumbed to the theory that the only way to preserve a literary classic is to alter its idiom? (which sort of defeats the purpose, no?)

I can only account for this by supposing that (1) Toon has ever so quietly conceded defeat in the contemporary language debate, and (2) he has let his hatred of the 1979 BCP blind himself to the fact that he will now be rememberd as the progenitor of a banal and hackneyed "translation" (the most apt term here) of Cranmer's once majestic liturgy. Oh well.

The question of Catholicism

“I would like to ask in all seriousness whether Protestantism can be a real answer to anyone for whom Catholicism has never been a real question – whether we still have any real business with the church of the Reformation if in the meantime we have left alone the counterpart with which it struggled. And I would like to issue a warning of the unhappy awakening which might some day follow such detachment. Those who know Catholicism even a little know how deceptive its remoteness and strangeness are, how uncannily close to us it really is, how urgent and vital the questions it puts to us are, and how inherently impossible is the possibility of not listening seriously to those questions once they have been heard.”

—Karl Barth,“Der römische Katholizismus als Frage an die Protestantische Kirche,” in Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1925-1930, ed. Hermann Schmidt (Zurich: TVZ, 1994), p. 313.

Biretta tip to Ben Meyers over at Faith and Theology.

The Visible Church: My continuing conversation with "Anonymous"

ANON: "One" in what way? If you offer with the vague "in Christ", it is eerily similar to "invisible Church".

LEXORANDI2: The invisible Church model, originating with the Lutherans, makes personal faith or belief determinative of one’s membership in the Church. In such a model, the visible Church and her sacraments are secondary and non-determinative. All that counts is one’s personal faith. Thus you are right be concerned about this.

But that is not what I’m saying at all. Rather, baptism – a visible sign – is the determinative boundary of the Church. One is either baptized or not, and with the claim of baptism comes the responsibility to assent to the Church’s faith and teaching, which includes continuing “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.”

When I, as an Anglican, confess my “oneness” with the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox adherent I confess primarily a common baptism and a common faith (i.e., the Faith of the Church Catholic articulated in the Creed). But with this confession is also my affirmation that the respective ecclesial communities to which they belong are true, visible churches – part of the “one Church” that I confess in the Creed.

I suspect that your discomfort with the Anglican position (at least THIS Anglican’s position) is not only the explicit recognition of other apostolically-constituted churches (e.g., Roman Catholic, Orthodox), but also that other communities, whose apostolic pedigrees may be in question, are not explicitly “unrecognized.” I can only respond with something that a wise Eastern Orthodox priest once told me, “We can show you where the Church is, but we cannot always show you where it is not.” That Anglicans tend to err on the side of charity with respect to non-episcopal bodies is readily to be admitted. But I tend to see that as a virtue, not a vice.

A Few More Links

I'm still doing some house cleaning of my blog, as well as adding more features and some links. Check out the following blogs:

Axegrinder (long overdue to be added)
Disruptive Grace
Elysium
Anglican Ethos-Theological Resources
A-C Ruminations
The Sarabite
Per Caritatem
Evangelical Catholicism

Sacramental Causality

My friend Jeff over at meam-commemorationem recently published a "teaser" from an article critiquing Roman Catholic theologian L-M. Chauvet's postmodern take on Aquinas. Hopefully we can encourage Jeff to publish more entries on this article on his blog. Personally, I have profited greatly from Chauvet's Symbol and Sacrament, and I can already tell from the brief excerpt that the author is going to push a few of my buttons.

The entire article can be found HERE.

The Anglican Practice of Open Communion: A "Barthian" Take

A question from the comment section of an earlier entry ("My Third Reason for Remaining Anglican" - Saturday, January 6, 2007):

DMARTIN ASKS: Do Anglicans believe that to share the Body and Blood of Christ is an act of full communion or not?

LEXORANDI2: Obviously, I can only give you one Anglican's perspective on this, but, YES, this is certainly the principle behind the practice of open communion in Anglican churches, even if institutionally (canonically) our respective ecclesial communities (i.e. churches) do not yet live into this reality.

I find it helpful to appeal to Barth's objectivist theology in support of the "open Table" practice, particularly the question of what is real and unreal about the Christian and the Church in light of our union in Christ. What is real about the Church in Christ (objectively and eternally so) is the Church's unicity and holiness. Disunity and corruption -- the very things we unhappily "live into" -- are unreal, and thus are things destined to nothingness. By "living into" them (through schism and apostasy) we improperly reify the very things that have been abolished in Christ.

That being said, over the course of my ministry I have become increasingly passionate in my advocacy for the "open Table." For, despite our tenacity to live into the unreal (with respect to such things as "orders" and tertiary differences in doctrine), I am convinced that the Anglican tradition attains her highest degree of "living into the reality of what we already are in Christ" in the celebration of the sacraments via her "open Table."

Obviously, she fails miserably in other ways...

(I direct my readers to revisit an earlier blog entry --Dialogue with Barth-- for a further elaboration on the real and unreal distinction.)

Polling my readers: Please vote

Old format or new?

50 reasons why American Evangelicalism will be irrelevant by mid-century

Okay, I suppose some of these people are respectable. But on the whole this list is a frightening look at the state of American Christianity:

CLICK HERE

Biretta tip to T-1-9.

My Third Reason for Remaining Anglican

What follows is my response to an anonymous correspondent who left an insightful comment on my previous post It's all Greek to me?? Hardly... (18 December 2006). Within this response I elaborate briefly on my third reason for remaining Anglican.

+++++++

ANONYMOUS: What separates Rome, the EO, and the Anglicans is ecclesiology more than any other thing. If one was to believe that the Church is defined by the Pope that person would have no choice but to be in communion with Rome. If one was to believe in the ecclesial ultimacy of the EO that person would of course join the EO. If one wants to be eclectic or inclusive, they go to the Anglicans. The red herrings of molester-priests in the RCC, xenophobia in the EO, or apostasy amongst the Anglican episcopate is really not relevant. Objectively speaking, either all three groups are wrong in their ecclesiology or one of them is right. Your personal comfort because of socialization or a desire for a particular liturgy shouldn't trump or determine how you define "Church" as you confess it in the Creed.

LEXORANDI2: I couldn’t have said this better myself. THE theological issue separating Romanism, Byzantinism, and Anglicanism is ecclesiology, which leads into my third reason why I remain an Anglican: Anglicanism views eclecticism and inclusiveness as a virtue, if not the very heart of true Catholicism.

In this respect, Anglicanism looks more like the pre-schism (pre-1054) Church than do the alternatives. When I look at the Roman Church or the Eastern churches (or the Oriental Orthodox bodies for that matter), I see eminent apostolic churches that hold essentially to the same faith that I do as an Anglican. Nothing in my Anglican ecclesiology prevents me from affirming them, or any of the baptized, as full brothers and sisters in Christ, nor forbids them a place at the Table. Paradoxically, it is my affirmation of the same that prevents the very fellowship with RC's and EO's that I as an Anglican so desire. So, in this respect, what I see in Anglicanism is what I believe that Rome or Byzantium SHOULD BE.

ANONYMOUS: If the writer had a firm allegiance to his ecclesiastial affiliation he wouldn't have even had the thought of switching; in fact the mere thought of joining something that defines out of the Church his entire tradition post-1054 would have been less than appealing. RC's and EO's don't daydream about being anything but what they are because they have a strong position on what they are confessing about "Church" in the Creed. Anglicans need to develop the same strength, but how can they when you can gather a group of conservative Anglicans and no two agree on the past or the future?

LEXORANDI2: Given the present troubles within our Communion (to which Rome’s troubles with “molester-priests” or Byzantine xenophobia hardly compare), it takes a rather hardhearted person not to understand the fears and, yes, even doubts, that weigh heavily on the minds of many otherwise committed Anglicans as they see their tradition unraveling around them in the face of overt apostasy, and perhaps even - God forbid - the beginning of the end of the Anglican experiment. I also find your generalization of the comparable allegiances of RC's and EO's amusing in that I know perhaps ten times more RC and EO converts to Protestantism (and Anglicanism) than I do the reverse. Hmmm... I wonder if any of these converts ever "daydreamed" about being something else before they jumped ship?

Like I suggested before, when I look at Rome and Byzantium I see communions that should, in the interest of a more consistent catholicism, be more "Anglican." This should be a matter of concern for someone like you, because I suspect that I am not the only Anglican "daydreamer" who feels this way. If Anglicanism falls irreparably apart, there will no doubt be many Anglicans finding new homes in one of the two remaining apostolic communions, which inevitably means that these communions will indeed become more "Anglican" over time. Perhaps this will mean the end of ecclesial ultimacy? (As they say, every cloud has a silver lining.)

Additions to my blog list

I just added four blogs to my blog list. Long over due to be added is AH's very insightful Trinitarian Life, one of my favorite reads. Also, a new find for me which looks very promising is John Paul Hoskins' blog Tolle lege, tolle lege. My friend, Doug Martin, has added yet another blog - Second Spring - to his portfolio. And, finally, another blog long overdue to be added: Reformed Catholicism. Be sure to check them all out.

The Calling of Apostolic Churches in a Postmodern Age

I wrote the following reflection about a year ago for another context. Ben Meyer's discussion of the Virgin Birth (entry: December 23, 2006) over at Faith and Theology inspired me to dig it out of the archives for my readers. I'd appreciate any comments that you may wish to make.

+++++++

In my estimation, apostolic churches have a unique and peculiar calling within the kingdom of God to preserve and guard what can be termed the "Great Story" or "True Myth" (in Lewis' sense). This is the story of the New Testament: the mythos to which the early fathers provided normative articulation in ancient creedal and doxological symbols that are with us to the present day -- preserved in the liturgies of the great apostolic churches.

Yet, on this side of the postmodern curve, academic honesty compels the scholar to admit that "proving" the historicity of the mythos is impossible. But then it should be noted that disproving the historicity of the mythos is just as certainly impossible (a fact that the likes of John Shelby Spong and company disingenuously dismiss). Simply put, the mythos – the very object of the Church's faith – is not subject to historical or scientific investigation (either in proof or disproof). Rather it transcends critical inquiry, while, paradoxically, benefiting in the many new ways of understanding the Faith that may thus emerge from such investigation into the biblical milieu itself.

Be that as it may, the mythos or story is the starting point for all true Christian theology, whether one assumes the historicity of, say, the virgin birth or not. In this, as I said before, the apostolic churches have a unique calling. What would the Christian Faith be without the virgin birth? the resurrection? the ascension? or the parousia? What would it be without the doctrines of the Trinity? the Incarnation? or the Hypostatic Union? Make of these things what you will, but any supposed “Christianity” lacking the core elements of its mythos would be unrecognizable. To lose these things would be to displace the Christian Faith with something else, which at best would only be similar in appearance.

However, to answer more directly what must surely be the most pressing question raised by this line of thinking: The Christian Faith is not a belief in the historicity of the resurrection (as an end in itself), but rather faith in the resurrected Christ; it is not a belief in the historicity of the virgin birth (as an end in itself), but rather faith in the Christ who was born of a Virgin.

I'm back!

Actually, I didn't realize I would be "away" (from blogging that is). We just returned from spending the holiday with our families in Central Pennsylvania. I thought I'd have some time to blog while we were visiting. But as it turned out, we were much too busy.

My Roman friends might like to know that my oldest son and I attended a Christmas Eve Mass at a Roman Catholic parish -- St. Joan of Arc, Hershey, PA. The church was packed out! And it was only one of many services they were having that day. The service was a typical contemporary V-2 affair, and yes, I admit that I could not help musing that the Romans could learn a lot from the Episcopalians about how to "do" liturgy. But there is one thing the Romans seem to do right EVERY time I witness it, no matter what style of service (contemporary or traditional): the consecration of the elements. The solemnity of THAT moment was worth enduring all of the contemporary praise music beforehand. Even though I did not (and obviously could not) partake, I left that service fully nourished.

Until next time.

P.S. Blessed New Year to all my readers!

Toward a Post-Critical Hermeneutic of Scripture

What follows is one of the best summaries of where hermeneutics has been and where it is going. Hang on and enjoy the ride!

+++++++

The Jewish and Christian hermeneutic of the Talmudic and Patristics period and of medieval times corresponds to a pre-modern concept of the world as a sacred cosmos or a symbolic universe: the revelation of the sacred in the space and time of secular experience creates a symbolic world, a global system of meaning. The subject, man or woman, is and feels a part of the objective world with no awareness at all of an opposition between subject and object. A system of myths and rites, a metaphysical theology and a liturgy made up of symbols, explain and celebrate at the same time the origin, the being, the final destiny and regular rhythm of this present life. Myth and reality, word and thing, merge completely and as yet they have not been separated and challenged. The Bible has both a literal and a spiritual meaning which together determine an infinity of meanings, hidden in each expression, each word and even each letter of Scripture.

Modern hermeneutic corresponds to a world in which the I, the thinking subject, and the physical and mathematical universe replace the sacred cosmos as the focal point. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, replaces myth and metaphysics, explaining not just objective reality but only how it is possible to know the objective world. This puts a gulf between the thinking subject and the object. Critical rationalism of the Enlightenment ends up questioning the God of theologians and philosophers and the critical history of Romanticism puts an interdict on texts in which the revelation of the Bible is expressed.

Post-Modern or Post-Critical hermeneutic is marked by a certain disenchantment with enlightened conscience and some glimpses of re-enchantment with the world. Post-modernism does not reject the values of modernity, rational criticism and freedom from dogma, but it accepts that enlightened criticism is not free from prejudice and its pretensions to objectivity are often no more than wishful thinking. The post-modern world is not the world of the ancient sacred cosmos but neither is it its simple negation or its dissolving in the world of the subjective conscience. It is a world created by language, made manifest in dialogue with the other. Understanding takes place through prior anticipations, through pre-understanding and pre-judice, through the hermeneutic circle of question and answers (Heidegger). Understanding is not a monologue with objectivity but a dialogue with the subjectivity of the other or with the other expressed in the texts transmitted by tradition. Without it being possible to return to the pre-critical world of tradition which has become dogma, contemporary hermeneutic wishes to recover the mediating force of tradition and even the symbolising and imaginative meaning of allegory. Unlike enlightened hermeneutic, Post-modern thinking shows respect for openness to the divine and the sacred and especially to symbolic and religious language in general, typical of the post-modern era.

In this process of re-evaluation of tradition and of the interpretation of symbols and allegories, without however abandoning enlightened criticism of the texts of historical and religious tradition, lies the viewpoint of this book. It does not try a direct approach, supposedly free of presuppositions and prejudices, to the biblical texts of over two thousand years ago, but instead tries to emphasise the mediating role of Jewish and Christian tradition and of post-modern hermeneutic based on the play between literal and allegorical, in every attempt at complete understanding of the texts of the Bible.

--Julio Trebolle Barrera, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible (Cambridge, 1998), 545-6

It's all Greek to me?? Hardly...

Last Sunday I took my worship class on a fieldtrip to our local Greek Orthodox Cathedral here in Houston for the Sunday Divine Liturgy. The purpose of the trip was solely pedagogical, yet I could not help reflecting on the sad state of my own denomination, and my commitment to remain a part of the Anglican tradition.

Admittedly, the service felt a little alien to me at first, despite the fact that I was quite able to follow the liturgy, and even to respond in Greek somewhat proficiently. That being said, the liturgy was enthralling, and before I knew it I was musing that I could quickly get used to worshipping in this manner on a weekly basis. Then it hit me. I already affirmed everything they affirmed. I believed as they believed. There were no obstacles -- not doctrine, not icons, not piety, not the filioque -- standing in the way of my becoming Orthodox (with a "big-O"), that is, if I so desired. Nothing at all. So naturally I was faced with the question: as a "small-o" orthodox Christian, why remain Anglican?

On the way home that afternoon, I came up with three answers (only two of which I'm ready to share with my readers. The third, still provisional, will have to wait):

(1) I remain Anglican because the Anglican way of orthodoxy is something worth staying in and fighting for. In its best expressions, Anglicanism is a wondrously beautiful vehicle for the transmission of the orthodox faith. Not only do I believe it can be so in the future, but I believe it is so now in the present (albeit in limited contexts). The loss of Anglicanism to the cancer of relativity, God forbid, would be a loss not only for a few Episcopalians, but a loss for the whole Body of Christ as well. Some of my friends have suggested that the Western-Rite option in Eastern Orthodoxy could easily fill this void. My response: Anglicanism is a natural home for orthodoxy (small-o), but Orthodoxy (big-O) could never be a natural home for Anglicanism.

(2) I remain Anglican because I am culturally an Anglican Christian, and I see my culture as a heritage entrusted to me to pass on to future generations. Surely, some of my friends might object, "What profit is there in saving your culture only to lose your soul?" However, I think this is a false dichotomy. As I looked around at the mostly Greek congregation gathered in that Greek Orthodox Cathedral during its Greek liturgy, it was obvious to me that, for that particular congregation, being "Greek" and being "Christian" were practically co-terminous. Corporately speaking, culture is the soul of a church. The Christian Faith is fundamentally incarnational, and thus it naturally incarnates itself in culture -- be it Greek or British.

Simply put, I am an Anglican Christian, I can be no other.

Until next time.

P.S. I'm still pondering this question, of course.

The "Catholica"

The Church which is "Jesus Christ spread abroad and communicated" completes -- so far as it can be completed here below -- the work of spiritual reunion which was made necessary by sin; that work which was begun at the Incarnation and was carried on up to Calvary. In one sense the Church is herself this reunion, for that is what is meant by the name of Catholic by which we find her called from the second century onward, and which in Latin as well as in Greek was for long bestowed upon her as a proper noun. Katholikos in classical Greek, was used by philosophers to indicate a universal proposition. Now a universal is a singular and is not to be confused with an aggregate. The Church is not Catholic because she is spread abroad over the whole of the earth and can reckon on a large number of members. She was already Catholic on the morning of Pentecost, when all her members could be contained in a small room, as she was when the Arian waves seemed on the point of swamping her; she would still be Catholic if tomorrow apostasy on a vast scale deprived her of almost all the faithful. For fundamentally Catholicity has nothing to do with geography or statistics. If it is true that it should be dsiplayed over all the earth and be manifest to all, yet its nature is not material but spiritual. Like sanctity, Catholicity is primarily an intrinsic feature of the Church.

--Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (Ignatius Press), 48-9.

The Boys are Back in Town!

I'm excited! After a lengthy hiatus, the Energies of the Trinity blog is back up again. Perry Robinson and Photius Jones, the "boys" over at Energies, are quite heady, but always informative and usually provocative. Be sure to check them out.