In the last week a couple of posts from Tripp and Todd have got me thinking about doctrine and belief, and the relation between borders and doubt.

There are those, in concert with Descartes, who would subscribe everything to radical doubt--but not so as to reject it, rather to get to the heart of that which is true. And, like Descartes, they want to deal with clear and distinct ideas. Those fuzzy areas are fine and dandy, but we don't need to make shibboleths out of them. This is seen in the well-intentioned desire to get to the "core of the Gospel." If we're not talking about "Gospel matters," then we can leave things in the realm of the less-than-clear and focus on what really counts. There may be more subtle and interesting nuances than my overbroad generalization indicates, but this seems to me to be the prevailing mindset.

The problem is: What are the Gospel matters about which we should be definite, and which demarcate out those things with which we can live in fuzzy diversity? In the sexuality debates (by way of example, but a topic about which these thoughts are not), it is asserted by some that Jesus never said a word about sexuality (minus a passage or two on adultery), and therefore we are free to find our own way and come to our own conclusions. (No matter if they coincide or conflict with Paul, say.) Others, however, assert that sexuality (even if Paul the repressed homophobe is the locutor) is mentioned in Scriptures (a normative set of writings by the by), and is therefore "Gospel matter"--even if it isn't in the Gospel texts per se.

I utilize the sexuality question simply because it is so clearly illustrative of what I think is going on regarding these matters of relativism, borders, belief and doubt. What determines the evaluation of core matters? It seems to me the answer is relatively simple: one's own presuppositions. If one assumes Scripture to be the norming influence on Christian thought, then Scripture will determine the core matters. (I leave out for the moment questions of hermeneutical stances.) If one assumes that human history has revealed the dubiosity of most (if not all) external sources of determinate importance, then it is pretty much up to the individual (the Protestant notion, for example, of soul competency). Then there are those who are of the mind that one's group (here in my discussion, the church) is the only realistic starting point for evaluative thinking.

The difficulty, however, is the relative blindness to the already-given nature of our presuppositions. So much goes on in our thinking that gets little attention. Epistemic humility is rarely the order of the day. Take for example those who dismiss Paul with even a most articulate version of "Well, we know so much more than did he." Hmmmm. No presupposition there? What is it that we "know"? That which has been scientifically "proven"? But what gave to scientific endeavor that authority? And will science ever discover the core explanation for why it is I love my wife--even when she most exasperates me? (Freud has his answers. But sometimes love is just love.) Further, how is it our knowledge privileges us to disregard Paul? Has there really been that much positive evolution in the last two thousand years? How do we know? Even something so "objective" as science cannot provide us with determinative answers.

So are we left with solipsism? It's my way, baby, right or wrong? Rightly, some reject this sort of individualistic notion. They want to affirm and assert that there is a reality: Truth is, Agent Scully, out there. So how do we find it?

Scripture? The Protestant sola scriptura doesn't, it seems to me, have worked very well, despite its hopeful promise. After all, which hermeneutic does one choose? How do we know we have the right interpretation? Those are questions that do not seem readily answered by Scripture alone.

Human reason? But reason, if it can be asserted to be pure, is all too often perverted by human evil. How can we purify reason in such a way that it would instill a good will in us? To ask that question, however, is similarly to step outside reason. If something can purify reason, it must be greater than reason and able to tell reason where it is corrupt.

The church? But which one? Can the Southern Baptist Convention tell the Episcopal Church where it is wrong? Will the non-denominational Stone-Campbell churches accept the decrees of Rome?

Okay, the point thus far: theological thinking is inescapably perspectival. That is a big revelation, I know. But it's important to point out. For the sola scriptura folks, there's no Lockean tabula rasa on interpreting Scripture. We all come with presuppositions. For the rationalists, reason, though a sharp tool, is fallen and its critical faculties often moved by inclination. For the scientistic types, get over it.

At this point the relativists (or semi-relativists, if such creatures there are) are smiling smugly and sipping their chai. "Yes, of course. We know all this. This is why no one can really claim to have a lock on the truth. All our knowing is provisional." [Sip.] "Let's just get over it and commiserate." [Sip.] And the doors of the unseen trap close upon them.

It seems to me that the only real means for Christians to handle doctrinal truths is to stand in the tension between Scripture (or rather our interpretation of it) and the two thousand year tradition of the Church. As Paul says to the Corinthians: "You received that which I passed on ["traditioned"] to you." We 21st century Christians neither have the luxury nor the right to reinvent Christian faith. (Sorry, Messr. Spong. Get over it.) We can only receive that which we've been given. Which is not to say, that we accept it uncritically. In the Orthodox traditions, even ecumenical councils must be received by the laity. And one of our testing resources for tradition is the Scripture. But in true dialectic, the Tradition shapes our understanding of Scripture as well. Thus there is the ongoing interplay between the Scripture and Tradition. Both have the same source and confirm each other. Through the lenses of both, Christians can come to understand the truth. Or, more accurately, the Truth: he in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Sorry to blather on about all this, but I'm on my own peregrine trajectory regarding Tradition, Scripture and the Church, and what I believe about all this. Consider this a continuation of the previous posts on relativism, borders and such.

I said earlier that Tradition is that with which we inescapably have to do. I must confess, the two church groups with which I have been aligned in my life, the non-denominational Christian churches and churches of Christ and the Episcopal Church, have, frankly, not done so well with Tradition.

For the Stone-Campbell churches (the non-denoms), Tradition has always been a bad thing--at least mostly so. We never did want to jettison Tradition completely. But Tradition took a back seat, way in the back, to Scripture. We were all about "restoring" the New Testament pattern of the Church in our day. Not that the Church itself had been lost, mind you (though different restorationists would give different opinions on that). Rather, the simplicity and robust faith of the New Testament Church, so we believed, had been organized away in favor of bishops and hierarchy, formal theology and liturgy. (I'm caricaturing the Stone-Campbell position just a bit, but not a lot.) Tradition came in to play only when blessed by the clear and consistent witness in Scripture. To overstate somewhat: if you could book-chapter-and-verse it, it could stand.

Trouble is, such a position, well-intentioned though it is, is either utterly naive, or overly hubristic. The fact of the matter is, we do not approach Scripture apart from tradition (in modern hermeneutical terms, "presuppositions"). Case in point: Alexander Campbell, one of the early leaders of the Stone-Campbell movement, wrote a book which has been given the title Christianity Restored. (The book was actually a series of magazine articles Campbell had written serially, so take the title with a grain of polemical salt and attribute it to the publisher, not to Campbell.) In the book, Campbell is arguing for the "Restoration Plea" noted above: to "restore" the New Testament pattern of the Church in our day. But with what does Messr. Campbell begin? Hermeneutics. It's obvious to me, though I cannot speak for Alexander, that one will come to the same conclusions from reading Scripture as Mr. Campbell . . . if you follow his hermeneutical method. And on what was the method based? The Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Francis Bacon. Even Campbell has his tradition. And with it he interprets and applies Scripture.

For the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), the odd thing is, for the most part Episcopalians have not wanted to buck Tradition. Given that they arose from the English Reformation, and thus had certain evangelical foundations, this is saying something. They kept the traditions of baptism and the Eucharist, of clerical ordination, the church kalendar, and so forth--all woven throughout with evangelical flavor. (Different periods and regions of ECUSA have been more and less Protestant than others, so there's some variations within my general point.) Oddly enough, however, over the last few decades, ECUSA has given less and less weight to Tradition. Taking our cue from modern sociopolitical movements, we went from an all-male priesthood to female clergy, we've restructured the liturgy in such a way so as to remove almost all masculine references to God--in some cases replacing them with feminine references, and we've definitely moved away from the traditional morality of the last two thousand years, not merely in terms of gay and lesbian concerns, but now also accepting those in conjugal relationship who are not married on the same terms as the married. (If your head is spinning, sit down and breathe into a paper bag.)

So, I am from a movement who rejects Tradition outright, and have lately been in a group who picks and chooses (on the basis of modern mores shored up by theology) what of it they want to adhere to and what they want to reject.

Yes, I know of Stone-Campbell ministers who have a deep respect for Tradition. I correspond with them regularly. I also know of Episcopalians (whole dioceses, mind you) who are as horrified as I at the mishandling of Tradition by their fellow Episcopalians. But this does not negate the trends and ethoi.

There is another way. A better way. Indeed, one that I think more honest--if one will claim Christ's name. That is to take the Tradition of the Church as is. Let it and Scripture tell us where we're wrong. Scripture and Tradition do not carry their authority because some uptight celibate males got together and said so. (Though that is the modern caricature of what happened.) Rather, they carry their authority because they, like us, are given life and indwelt by the three-personed God. Not for nothing is the Incarnation an important fact and doctrine.

"To Thee, our Lord, do we commend our bodies and our souls. Do Thou bless us, have mercy on us and grant us eternal life."

Yesterday was my final class on Plato's Republic (Politeia, for all of us in the know!). This morning, having completed my morning prayers, I read a bit from the Church Fathers, from St Benedict's Rule, and, more to the point, St Paul's epistle to the Galatians. Interestingly, as I rode the bus to the el, and the el to work, and as I thought about Galatians 5, it occurred to me that there are some strong similarities between Plato (or, more accurately, Socrates) and Paul.

First, St Paul. In Galatians 5, Paul exhorts the Galatian Christians to "walk in the Spirit" so as to avoid the "works of the flesh." The works of the flesh are such nasty things as: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, "and the like." Gotta hand it to Paul: he's not one to leave any stone unturned. Rather, by walking in the Spirit, one will produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control.

Now Plato's Republic; and here we have to take a pretty wide view. The Politeia spans ten "books" and some 300 pages in English translation. Although the Politeia is ostensibly about justice, to illustrate justice, Plato contrasts the two great figures in the book: the philosopher-king and the tyrant. In summary, the philosopher-king is a person ruled by reason, whose spirited and appetitive (or ambitious and pleasure-loving) aspects follow reason. The spirited part of someone's soul, according to Socrates, assists reason in disciplining and controlling the appetites. In the philosopher-king, therefore, we have a person (man or woman, Socrates wants to point out) who is, in modern terms, "balanced." They are neither too ambitious and honor-loving (proud), nor are they hedonistic. The tyrant, on the other hand, is not even ruled by ambition, or the spirited aspect of his soul. Rather, the tyrant is wholly given to pleasure. Pleasure rules in his soul, supported by the spirited part, with reason following along. He is, if you will, the antithesis of the philosopher-king.

One need not buy into the Platonic tripartite soul to get the point. If we allow our appetites or our ambitions to rule us, we are irrational, unjust persons. Similarly, in Paul, if we do not walk in the Spirit, we are unspiritual, fleshy things.

I'm not equating the Socratic descriptions of the philosopher-king and the tyrant with St Paul's descriptions of the life in the Spirit and the life in the flesh. Rather, what is interesting is the role intentionality has to play in both. Socrates sets out a robust paideia, or educational/disciplinary framework, for the philosopher-king. And much of this paideia is cultural, given, not something the budding philosopher-king-to-be can will. Similarly, for St Paul, there is also a mathema, or a discipleship, for the Spirit-walkers. It is an already-given reality called the Church, or the Kingdom of God. Both Paul and Socrates have athletic images and realities that play their part in their respective formations. That being said, however, there is nonetheless an intentionality about the lives these respective persons live. They will their respective teloi, or ends. That is to say, the tyrant wills his hedonism. The flesh-walker wills his heresies and envies. And the consequences that follow.

I'm not talking Pelagianism. I'm talking synergy. As St Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure." God does and we do.

"Therefore, brothers, stand and hold the traditions which you have been taught either through word or through our letter." (2 Thessalonians 2:15, my translation).

Blogger Karl referenced this verse in his musings on the brouhaha between Jeff, Tripp and myself (and various participant-spectator commentators). "Traditions" is actually a misleading translation, because it can give the understanding that there were multiple traditions in the Church amongst which these first-century religious consumers could choose. More literally "traditions" is "things handed over [or handed down]," that is to say, the unified body of Tradition, in its various particular manifestations (dogma, practice, liturgy). Compare 2 Thessalonians 3:6.

In an essay I've posted on my website, I point out that what Paul is talking about here is important. The context is that a letter purporting to come from Paul and teaching false doctrine had come to the Thessalonian church and created confusion. To what did Paul appeal to assert the genuineness of his own epistle? Not to another letter, but to his oral teaching while among them.

Don't be afraid, Protestant friends and neighbors, I'm not going to jump into the so-called "secret" oral tradition of the Apostles. (In any case there's nothing "secret" about it, since it's well-documented from the first century on.) But I do want to point out something: the Thessalonian Christians were not able to opt out of observance of the tradition. Despite confusion, Paul asserted this apostolic authority, and called all to the tradition. Anyone one who did not follow the tradition was to be "disfellowshiped." "Have nothing to do with them," Paul says. Now I don't know exactly what that looked like then. Maybe it only applied to week-day interactions. Maybe they were barred from the Eucharist. I just don't know. And I'm not suggesting that we exclude from our lives everyone who doesn't agree with us.

My point is much more basic and general: we don't have any option to not follow the tradition. And in light of the recent discussion: particularly is this so when it comes to doctrine and Scripture. We may wrestle with it and question it. But we do so on its own terms. We do not dictate to the Church's tradition. It doesn't work. Look at the Great Schism. Look at the Protestant Reformation. Every time human opinion has been elevated over the tradition, division and animosity occurs. Does anyone seriously entertain the notion that women's ordination in ECUSA has brought about justice? Hardly. It's just shifted power to other people who misuse it as badly, or even worse, than those who went before. Forget arguments about justice and rights; this has been shown to be, for many, about power and control. So we're back to the argument about whether this--and other practices that differ from tradition--can legitimately claim to be in line with the Gospel.

In short, this is about authority. Is an individual's or group's authority greater than the tradition? The tradition has been questioned and challenged for two millennia. My money's on the tradition.

I believe you confuse some legitimately differentiated categories. Let me make sure I clarify the terms under which I'm talking.

First, as to anthropology: Man (as woman and man) does of course bear the image of God. But that image, in the present age (and here I skip over the various theories as to "when" man as image of God was made male and female and whether male/female differentiations will obtain in the fully realized Kingdom) is an image differentiated in particular persons as male and female. There is no sense of incompleteness in either manifestation of this difference. Just as the Son and the Father are to be differentiated from one another, yet are one God, so men and women are differentiated but are one mankind (I use "mankind" to continue the parallels to Trinitarian theology).

Second: as to the sacrament of the priesthood. The priest, as sacrament, in the tradition of the Church, is not an image of humanity, nor an image of the entire Godhead, but is, specifically, an image of the Father. The sacramentality of the priest is not about whether or not God, as in the Trinity, is masculine, but is rather about a representation of the divinely revealed person of the Father. The Church has understood that to have a human "image" the person of the Father, then a male is the appropriate person of humanity to do so, since males are, biblically, father-begetters. Note the reason why men are priests: it's not because they have gonads. It's because they are father-begetters. (Yes, that entails certain "parts" but the point of the imaging is not sex but person, that of father-begetter.)

Third, the place of women: women, as well as men, are included in the so-called "salvation history" of God as differentiated persons of the human. There is no talk of incompleteness here. Just because women cannot, in the Tradition, be priests, says nothing about their worth or value. It simply says, men are to image God the Father. It doesn't make men more important. The priesthood is not a right that people can demand. The priesthood no more makes women complete citizens of the Kingdom than it does men. Denying women, and most men, access to the priesthood neither makes them less complete. Some men are called by God to the sacrament of Christ's priesthood to, in part, image God the Father. These men, as ordained priests, are no more complete in the humanness or Christianness than other men or all women.

To argue from the sacrament of the priesthood to the arena of salvation/theosis is to confuse categories of discussion. Women are no less members of the Kingdom, even though in the Church's Tradition they cannot be priests, than are men. Indeed, in the East, the number of women saints, martyrs, empresses, etc., are as numerous as those for the men. I know, I pray to the saints daily utilizing the Orthodox calendar. Today, in fact, is the feast day of the martyr Tatiana of Rome.

Finally, regarding culture: This is where I find myself completely baffled. Critics of male-only priesthood want to state that for x-hundred/thousand years the Church was dominated by cultural conditions and refused women a "place at the table" with regard to ordination. They then want to state that "now we know better."

Is it just me, or does this strike anyone as a bit contradictory (as well as a bit too condescending)? I'm to understand that previously the Church was bound by cultural conditioning, but our current views are not culturally conditioned? For that matter, how do we know that our views are any more righteous/correct than the previous centuries in the Church, if everything is so culturally conditioned? Are they right just because these current views fit our own terms? Isn't that called question-begging? How can we differentiate between our view being right on our terms, but wrong on the terms of Tradition--if everything is culturally conditioned?

C S Lewis states, in the introduction to On the Incarnation by St Athanasius (this introduction appears, I think, in collections as "On the Reading of Old Books" or something like that):

"Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. . . . We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century--the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"--lies where we never suspected it . . . . None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them."

If we could appropriate Lewis' comments in terms of our present discussion, he would argue that, yes, aspects of the practice of Tradition have their blind spots, and yes, our current critics have some ability to point those out. But those who argue against Tradition for the ordination of women cannot say that theirs is a perspective free of cultural bias. That is, just because they can "deconstruct" Tradition with the best of them doesn't make them any more or less insightful than our Traditional forebears.

Furthermore, for all that proponents of women's ordination want to argue that a) the old ways are steeped in a paternalistic, masculine image of God; b) God is without sex and gender; and c) therefore God is to be talked about as Mother--in progressing to c) they violate b). (And of course, I wouldn't accept a) in any case.) In other words, if they were really consistent with their argument, no gender-directed references to God are allowed. If a masculine image of God is incomplete, how is a feminine any more complete? We alternate between two incompletes? Then why is some seminary liturgies is God mentioned from time to time as Mother, or maternal, but when we come to the "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord?" (a Christological reference) neutered to "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord?" Why is it, in the Old One Hundredth not "Praise Him all creatures here below?" but "Praise God all creatures here below?" This is inconsistent. The only rational thing to do would be to neuter all references to God--if proponents of women's ordination really mean what they say about God not having sex/gender, and thus it is inappropriate to refer to him in masculine terms. By calling God Mother, on their own terms they limit God to gender, too, just a different one, and they violate their own critique.

But then, that's my culturally conditioned view, so it can be dismissed on the grounds that it doesn't agree with their culturally conditioned view.

And to add one final response to this excruciatingly long comment: The Tradition does not assert that the dogmatic definitions of the Church are exhaustive views of God. In fact, if you read the Chalcedonian definition you'll find that it doesn't completely state who Christ is. Rather, the Tradition of the Church is typically apophatic: it states that which God is not. Chalcedon on Christ: without change, separation, confusion, division--all alpha-privatives, stating Christ is not these things.

This gives the Church room to speak non-exhaustively, and authoritatively, about God without going off the rails. They provide boundaries we may not cross without doing harm to every aspect of theology, since all theology is connected, and ultimately derives from Trinitarian theology/Christology.

Women's ordination is against Tradition. But it is not wrong simply because it's against Tradition, but also because it presents a Trinitarian theology that is "outside the boundaries" which will lead to deficiencies (if not heresies) in Christology and anthropology. I've already alluded, by way of critique, to some of those deficiencies above: rights-talk with regard to the sacraments, fulfillment of person through access to sacramental functions, deficiencies regarding the imago dei, etc.

Okay, every time I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in. My selections of passages relating to some of the ecclesiological ruminations and responses from Tripp's blog.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23; English Standard Version and hereafter)

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? (1 Corinthians 10:16-18).

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3.10-17; the "you's" in this passage are plural, not singular).

And he [God the Father] put all things under his [God the Son’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23)

. . .to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19; the "you" here is plural).

. . .in him [i. e., Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority (Colossians 2:9-10; the "you" here is plural).

. . . the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth. (1 Timothy 3:15)

. . .in whom [i. e., Christ] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:3)

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:13-15; "you" plural, definitely taking in the Apostles)

. . . it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord . . . For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements . . . (Acts 15:25, 28)

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:12)

If you haven't read Athanasius' De Incarnatione (On the Incarnation), do. It's available in an inexpensive paperback edition, with the classic introduction by C S Lewis, from SVS Press. In all thy getting, get this book.

Athanasius is a master of pulling out the implications of the Incarnation for soteriology, or salvation. If Christ was not fully human, he couldn't save us. To save men and women, God had to become man, put on flesh, and then, in his death and Resurrection, raise that flesh from sin and death. On the other hand, Christ also had to be fully God, because only God had the sort of life that could meet death and overcome it. More to the point, fellowship with God was the point for which humans were created, so Christ as God saves us from death and brings us into a participation in God (2 Peter 1:4). As Athanasius puts it "God became man that man might become god."

But my point is not so much the incarnation, as Athanasius' method. Doctrine matters, Athanasius asserts, because truth matters, and Christ is the Truth. Doctrine and life go hand in hand. What you believe matters, because, what you believe will find expression in your life. Or to say it the other way around, the way you live is an indication of your true beliefs. And if you believe wrongly about salvation, Athanasius asserts, that will have real-life, real-world consequences. Salvation is a direction. One is headed toward God because one has been saved. But if one believes wrongly about God, one will not, as it were, head in the right direction. One will take a path leading away from God.

This is why Spong cannot say that Christ is not really born of a virgin, or not really raised bodily from the dead, and not face serious consequences not only in terms of soteriology, but in terms of the here and now. (One wants to ask of Messr Spong how he knows what he knows about the virgin, and whether he's extrapolating from extreme prejudice. Funny thing, though Spong has always refused to put his beliefs and assertions to the test via debate and written response. I wonder who's really afraid of being proven wrong here, Spong or the fundamentalists he consistently bashes in his strawman arguments? But I digress.) As one author has put it, heresy is cruel. It is cruel because it lies. It promises something which it does not deliver: life. The Tradition of the Church in that it participates in the Truth who is Christ, gives life and gives it abundantly. It is the easy yoke which gives rest.

We moderns don't like to be told what to believe. We somehow think that if we don't have freedom to believe what we want, we are somehow not authentic. But the question is not a matter of freedom from, but a matter of freedom for. Freedom does not only consist in freedom from restraint, it also consists in freedom for something. God has built in that we can choose to believe what we want. We are free from constraint. But we are not free from the consequences and implications of our belief. That would be true inauthenticity: to believe something but not participate in its reality, good or ill. Instead we are free for a purpose: free to participate in the life of God. But to do so we have to be on the pathway that leads to God. To find that pathway we must believe it exists, and that by following it we will find the God whom we seek. But there is only one pathway to God: Christ. And whatever we may believe, if we do not follow that pathway, we will not find God. Because ultimately by not following that pathway we reveal we do not believe. And God is not so cruel as to make us inauthentic by not allowing us the consequences of our belief.

In a note to Tripp I reflected on my change from a Zwinglian, anti-sacramental understanding of the Lord's Supper, to what is the biblical and patristic witness. In this experience is encapsulated my move to a sacramental faith in general.

Growing up in the Stone-Campbell churches, I was taught that the Lord's Supper was a time of contemplation when we remembered historical events, asked forgiveness of our sins, and gave thanks for the salvation by grace through faith we'd been given. The small rectangles of cracker-like bread (we irreverent college students called them chiclets), and the small thimbles full of grape juice, were nothing more than, well, "chiclets" and grape juice. They were symbols, sure, but only mental reminders of historical realities.

While in Bible college training for ministry in the Stone-Campbell churches, I served as a minister to yoked parishes in Mound City, Kansas: the Wall Street Christian Church (my first experience of a church named out of sarcasm--Wall Street Christian Church was located about five miles outside of Mound City in the midst of acres of pasturage) and the Federated Church (itself a coming together of a Methodist Church and another church back in the early decades of the twentieth century). It was while the elements were being passed to the various members during the service at the Wall Street church that it hit me: Is this all there is? I had some sort of intuition of the holiness of this time, and had the impulse to kneel (a no-no as that would have been too Catholic). Something more than just meditation had to be going on here. Eventually I came to the belief that somehow Jesus had to be specially present with his Church at this time. I wouldn't have been able to defend or even articulate that belief very well at the time. But I held it with conviction.

In my journey into Anglicanism, I began to better understand some of the teachings of the Church relative to the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Our Lord. Such things still smacked too much of that Protestant bugaboo of transubstantiation for me, but I began to modify my understanding. I slowly came to believe that Christ was present in a special way in the Eucharist, not simply just present with his Church, but somehow present in a wonderful way in the activity of the Eucharist.

In the last few years I felt myself being drawn ever closer to the biblical and patristic understanding, but still hesitated from "going all the way." I understood the elements to be holy in a special way, so genuflecting and praying before the reserved Sacrament became a heartfelt way to pray and worship the Trinity.

But this past summer I hunkered down and thought through the issues I had about the Church, what it was, what it did, and so forth. (In an earlier blog I linked to those essays. The essay on the Lord's Supper can be found here.) In short, reading 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, and Ignatios and Irenaeus (among others) convinced me that the proper biblical and patristic understanding was that in the Eucharist the elements, in a great and mysterious way, become the body and blood of our Lord.

This understanding was predicated on a belief in the Incarnation of our Lord. I had always believed the Jesus was God in the flesh. But I had not always drawn those implications as far as they should have been. The Incarnation through the Resurrection sanctifies creation. By death Christ trampled down death, and released us from its bondage. So now all creation groans awaiting its redemption. This means things like bread, wine, oil, water, incense, and, most importantly, humans may partake in this renewal, this participation in the energies of God. We are saints not merely by divine fiat, as in the ubiquitous metaphor of the judge declaring the guilty innocent. We are saints because by participation in God our souls and bodies are transformed in a synergy of holiness and sanctification. If God can do that with humans, if God spoke the material world into existence, if the ground around burning bushes can be declared to be holy by the divine presence, it is surely not too difficult for bread and wine by divine mystery to become Christ's body and blood. It is surely no hard thing for water to be blessed and a means of prayer. It is surely no challenge to the Almighty to turn ordinary bread into antidoron to be brought home to the prayer corners of the faithful and used in worship. The Incarnation grants grace to the tangible.

This is no magic. Antidoron becomes hard and moldy at times. Holy water sometimes gets a bit smelly. (Which is why both should be used up frequently, and not saved superstitiously.) But these material corruptions do not diminish the gracious energies. Faith, living faith, after all, is an important component; perhaps second only to the divine activity itself.

But this is where I'm at now. It's not where I've always been. It has taken, quite literally, years of reflection, worship and study to come to this point. I'm grateful I can now share in the beliefs of millions of Christians around the world in our day, and the millions more of our fathers and mothers in the faith stretching all the way back to the upper room.

It occurs to me that modern "Christendom" is plagued with two related errors: self-preservation and progressivism. That is to say, we are oriented around preserving our institutions as "our" institutions and we think we know better than.

The church heritage out of which I came, the Stone-Campbell Movement, is a case in point. The Movement was originally a unity movement: "Christians only not the only Christians." So, as in the famous document known as "The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery" (signed on 28 June 1804), the elders of the Presbyterian church in Springfield (among whom was Barton W. Stone, for whom the Movement was later named in part) willed that their particular church body, "die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling." And, in doing that, they affirmed that "the people henceforth take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven; and as many as are offended with other books, which stand in competition with it, may cast them into the fire if they choose; for it is better to enter into life having one book, than having many to be cast into hell."

At first the Stone-Campbellites were able to maintain something of a parachurch association. But in time, they found it necessary to organize and congregate among themselves, apart from the larger body of Christ. Though the larger part of the Stone-Campbell churches have staunchly resisted forming a denomination (the Disciples of Christ, however, did so about thirty years ago), they still "keep to themselves." They have their own colleges for ministerial training, their own mission organizations, their own national convention (which is simply a very large preaching and teaching conference--it makes no formal or official decisions), and so forth. When I was in Bible college, we jokingly referred to ourselves as the "non-denominational denomination." (I know, I know, it's not original.)

More to the point, the early leaders, while rightly orienting themselves doctrinally around the New Testament Church, cut themselves off from historic Christianity by not considering the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils. So, on the one hand the Stone-Campbell churches teach the ancient doctrine of the saving effects of the act of baptism (though they don't call it a sacrament); but on the other hand, they "know better" than Ignatios of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, and the rest of the early Church, and accept Zwingli's understanding of the non-sacramentality of the Lord's Supper or Eucharist (that is, that it is merely a remembrance--and not anamnesis in the classic and patristic sense).

How sad.

Here a group of Christians had a phenomenal opportunity in the new world of the United States, and on what was then its western frontier, to forge a new return to the historic and New Testament Church. A return which would further the case of the Church in America. To lay aside all denominational differences, and return to the one Church of God. Instead, they eventually added yet another to the groups of Christian bodies in our world, further enlarging the schism. And in their Lockean and Baconian rationalistic confidence--well-intentioned though it certainly was--they assumed that 1700 years had given them more wisdom, knowledge and understanding than the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, some of whom had known the Apostles.

This is one large problem I have with modern Protestantism: we all want to work toward unity, but the "benchmark" which could serve to assist us in that, we ignore. It seems to me that if we want to be one Church, visibly and manifestly, it would make sense that we would believe and do those things the Church believed and did before the Great Schism, when it was still one. From the first millennium of the Church's history, we received a common form of government, our common and sacred Scriptures, the whole and unblemished Faith and Dogma of the Church. We all--in our historic lineages--had the same thing. If we're really serious about advancing the "cause" of unity, of ecumenism, it makes sense that we would all submit ourselves to the Church of the first millennium.

But perhaps we're too interested in preserving our own institutions. And perhaps we think we know better than they did.

I am a child of the Stone-Campbell Movement. I embrace my heritage, warts and all. But I am intent on taking the "program" of the Movement to its original intent: to seek and to be part of the One Church of Christ, the New Testament and historic Church. To go forward, it is necessary to return. And such a return must be to the full faith and life of the Church.

When one dismisses the institutional Church, or at least brackets it off into "its own world," it seems that one is left with little else than experience. Which is what I hear Tripp saying. It seems that Tripp celebrates that asserted reality, as though to say, "Good, what we have is primarily (or only?) experience."

But experience is so notoriously unstable. Yesterday I would have told an honest and earnest inquirer into how my day was going that it was a gloomy and depressing day. Yet were I to list all the things that happened, my inquirer would be hard pressed to understand my evaluation, because in actual fact far from depressing and gloomy, yesterday was filled with interest and accomplishment.

I suppose I understand why we want the world around us to respond to our experience of it. If we're down and depressed, we quite naturally want something good to happen. If we're frustrated, we understandably want things to go our way. This, I fear, is the notorious underbelly of experience. Far from being an accurate barometer of what's happening to us, it is clouded over with self-interest. We are right, it seems to me, to mistrust it in itself, or at least to attempt to ensure that our experience is evaluated and confirmed by something external to us.

Take for example concerns about "patriarchal" language in Bible translation and liturgy. Many devout and serious women experience the "male-oriented" language of Scripture and Eucharistic rite in a way that seems, according to their experience, to "block" their access to God. So the NIV people respond with the TNIV, a revision of the NIV New Testament that attempts to achieve a translation in which the aforementioned women no longer have the experience they do. Similarly, liturgical rites are scrubbed of father-male references. No longer does the Christological reference in the liturgy "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord" have to be male, despite Jesus' own incarnational and historical maleness, it can be "Blessed is the one who comes in the Name of the Lord." Thus the Church's Scripture (in translation) and liturgy can be made to conform to our experience. Which presumably removes feelings of alienation.

But I suppose the question I have is, isn't the appropriate response to these feelings not to evaluate Scripture translation and liturgy (at least not as a first response), but to evaluate experience? I want to be as sensitive as I can--being a male who has never himself experienced gender-linguistic barriers to God in Bible or worship--and do not want to in any way devalue the pain and alienation felt by those women who feel a lack of access in these matters. But I do want to ask quite seriously: On what grounds can we trust such such an experience? How can we evaluate that such an experience indeed matches the reality it thinks it has felt? What do we do with the millennia of experience of women who worshipped with this sort of language (across place and time) and did not feel alienated from God? And then, is the appropriate remedy to conform the Scriptural and liturgical world around us to our experience? Or is it the case that our experience is that which needs healing and conformation to Scripture and liturgy? In short, does our experience itself block access, because of its own shortcomings and not those perceived to be in Scripture and liturgy? And might it be the case that a renewed understanding of Scripture and liturgy vis a vis experience will open that experience to the access to God that was always there, if unseen and unfelt?

Despite my best efforts, I'm sure to offend those who read this who have felt deep pain in their experience of what they take to be the patriarchal language of the Bible and worship. Let me assure those folks again that I do not want to devalue or negate their experience. I merely want to look at alternative explanations.

Glory to God in all things.

© 2002-2003 Clifton D. Healy

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