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Mystical Paganism
An Analysis of the Presiding Bishop's Public Statements
This essay theologically analyzes a number of public
statements made by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
I analyze these statements because his thought expresses what
many people in the Episcopal Church actually think and feel.
Therefore, to theologically uncover his real theology is to
analyze an important aspect of ECUSA's corporate thought. My
sources for the Presiding Bishop's underlying theology were the
essays, sermons, and articles available in 1999 on the Episcopal
Church web site. I have read a number of his statements since
then. There is a consistent pattern throughout them all.
The Foundation
Two concepts undergird the Presiding Bishop's thought, the risen
Christ and the Spirit. Simply put, the risen Christ, by virtue
of being risen, is available to and active in all things. Then,
by the work of the Spirit, the Christian community recognizes the
truth of the risen Christ as revealed in all things. As far as I
know, the Presiding Bishop does not believe that the risen Christ
is known in a special and normative way in Word and Sacraments as
in classical Anglicanism. He does know, however, that Scripture
and Sacrament are important. He deals with them by claiming that
they reveal that the risen Christ is revealed in all things. I
will first show this in regard to Scripture.
Scripture
One of the Presiding Bishop's most quoted texts is John 16:12.
Jesus also tells his disciples that he still has many things to
say to them, but they cannot bear them now (John 16:12). It will
be the work of the Spirit to unfold in the life of the community
what Christ has yet to reveal. In other words, discernment of
truth is an ongoing process of communal discovery articulated by
the Spirit who reveals not simply truth but the risen Christ who
is truth, in and through the life we share with one another in
virtue of the one baptism.(1)
The Presiding Bishop interprets this text to
mean that
revelation will continuously unfold in the church, "in and
through the life we share with one another." From this
perspective, the real locus of revelation is the church, rather
than Scripture, and John 16:12 tells us this. As I shall show,
this on-going knowledge given to the church supersedes the
knowledge given in Scripture.
In making this claim, the Presiding Bishop
must counter
those who hold to Scripture as their ultimate authority. He does
this by claiming that Scripture itself claims experience as the
final norm. Therefore, if Scripture is normative, it puts
experience above itself. Consequently, Scripture isn't really
normative.
He shows this in many ways. In his
Ascension Day Sermon he
describes three ways of knowing Christ. First, there is the
historical Jesus known by the disciples. For many, this
knowledge of Jesus Christ is given in the biblical revelation,
but the Presiding Bishop thinks this knowledge is of limited
significance.
Knowing Christ is not therefore confined to an encounter with the
historical Jesus---"If only I had been there and seen him
and heard him speak!"---but can occur anytime or in any
place through the agency and quite unpredictable imagination of
the Holy Spirit.(2)
Secondly, there was the encounter between Christ
and the
disciples after resurrection and before the ascension. This
forty-day period prepares the believer for the third and decisive
stage, the period after the ascension where the risen Christ is
revealed in experience. This is where the real revelation
occurs.
What the Apostles perceived as Jesus leaving them once again,
this time not by way of the cross but by way of ascension, was in
fact a prelude to a deeper, fuller and more substantial knowing
of the risen One mediated by the Spirit.(3)
The ascension spells the end of the Apostles' knowing Christ as a
physical presence, a fixed object that they can "touch and
handle." It leaves them on the threshold of a new kind of
knowing in which Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life is
known inwardly and with such force that they will, in time, be
able with St. Paul to cry out, "The life I now live is not
my own, but the life Christ lives in me."(4)
The logical conclusion of the foregoing is
that the present
experience of the church is "deeper, fuller and more
substantial" than previous revelations since we belong to
the time after the ascension. From this it follows that present
revelation supersedes Scripture since Scripture was based on an
earlier and more limited way of knowing. These deeper
revelations are the additions referred to in John 16:12-14.
Further, the Presiding Bishop then claims that
Scripture itself
teaches that its revelation is only the first stage of an
evolving on-going revelation that continuously transforms and
extends Scripture.
We see this in Scripture itself: Time and again historical
circumstances provoked a fresh reading and new and usually more
hospitable interpretations of the very texts and traditions by
which the community of faith has previously understood itself.
And so it is even unto our own day; and so it will be in the
future, as God's boundless imagination continues to draw us into
an ever-unfolding future.(5)
The early Church with its Jewish heritage had to acknowledge the
presence and activity of the Spirit of Christ in the lives of
non-observant Gentiles outside the community, and in so doing was
obliged to reread its Scripture and reorder its inherited
traditions of purity and impurity, of inclusion and exclusion.(6)
In other words, Scripture needs to be ever
reinterpreted,
reordered, with fresh readings that are "more
hospitable" as "God's boundless imagination continues
to draw us into an ever-unfolding future."
Consider this statement.
Because Jesus Christ is the incarnate and glorified Word of God,
fundamental to all spirituality is the capacity and willingness
on the part of persons of faith to listen. "Oh that today
you would hearken to his voice!" we are counseled in Psalm
95, which is used throughout the Anglican Communion as an
Invitatory at Morning Prayer. As each day begins we are invited
to listen to the words and events which lie ahead "as those
who are taught." [Isaiah 50:4](7)
Since the risen Jesus is the
"incarnate and glorified
Word of God," he is available to all things. Therefore we
must listen, but not to Scripture in any normative fashion. No,
the Scriptures themselves, Psalm 95 and Isaiah 50, teach us to
listen to the "words and events which lie ahead" of us
each day. This theme, that the risen Christ is found in life,
events, our lives, is a veritable leitmotif of the Presiding
Bishop's thought. The following quotation is typical of many.
Listening to the Word who is Christ also involves listening to
our lives, to the events and circumstances, momentous and
ordinary. Each and all are shot through with meaning. We are
required as well to listen to the continuously unfolding life and
experience of our national churches and the larger Anglican and
world communion of which we are a part.(8)
Consider another typical quotation.
In the Acts of the Apostles we are told how "the word of God
"spread" and "grew mightily" [13:49; 19:20]
and how the apostles safely circumscribed world of 1st century
Judaism was turned upside down and inside out by manifestations
of Christ and the Holy Spirit in "unlikely and highly
problematical circumstances which defied all precedence and
reduced the apostolic community to proclaiming, "for it has
seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." (Acts 15:28)(9)
From this perspective, Scripture is not
content, but method.
Scripture shows us how the biblical people knew God in their
experience, and therefore how we should know God in our
experience. In this way God is known: a) "in and through
the life we share with one another in virtue of the one
baptism," b) "anytime or in any place through the
agency and quite unpredictable imagination of the Holy
Spirit," c) inside oneself since the "life I now live
is not my own, but the life Christ lives in me," d) in
"words and events which lie ahead," e) in the
"events and circumstances of our lives and experience,"
and finally, f) in "unlikely and highly problematical
circumstances which [have] defied all precedence."
Since Scripture teaches us that revelation does
not really occur
in Scripture, but in life, events, inside us, and in the highly
problematical, one does not read Scripture to discover the mind
of God. Rather, one reads Scripture as the "prelude"
to something "deeper, fuller and more substantial,"
that is, as a prelude to present experience. Since present
experience is deeper and more substantial, one will have to
"reread" and "reorder" Scripture. This
entails a "fresh reading and new and usually more hospitable
interpretations." This process of rereading and reordering
will continue forever as "God's boundless imagination
continues to draw us into an ever-unfolding future." In
this way, Scripture's real message is that Scripture is to give
way to experience as the risen Christ makes himself known in the
events and circumstances of life.
Sacraments
Just as Scripture was read to show that God is revealed in
experience, the Sacraments reveal that the risen Christ is
revealed in experience. Classically, Anglicanism has believed in
some form of "real presence." The term "real
presence" means that God is present in the Sacraments in a
saving way that is different from his presence in general
experience. The Presiding Bishop does not ostensible deny this.
He never bluntly says, "I think Christ is present in
Sacraments, but he is no more present there than anywhere
else." Nevertheless, he covertly denies the real presence
by implying that Sacraments reveal that Christ is revealed
everywhere with as much authority as in the Sacraments
themselves.
The eucharistic meal deepens and strengthens this fundamental and
ever unfolding relationship, as Christ takes to himself all that
we are and have yet to become, and makes our lives the medium of
his ongoing self-disclosure.(10)
If we make our homes in Christ - just as Christ through Scripture
and the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, seeks to
"dwell in us as we in him" - then we will truly be
disciples. That is, we will be teachable and available to the
insistent motions of the Spirit who leads us and forms us over
time through the events and experiences which accost us and
demand to be lived.(11)
In other words, discernment of truth is an
ongoing process of
communal discovery articulated by the Spirit who reveals not
simply truth but the risen Christ who is truth, in and through
the life we share with one another in virtue of the one
baptism.(12)
Or again, through baptism we become living stones (1 Peter 2:4ff)
integral to the building up of a spiritual temple not according
to our own whims and fancies, but according to God's ever active
and boundless imagination which, like the peace of God, passes
all understanding. This communion, this spiritual fellowship,
also makes us permeable to truth: truth which is discovered in a
living way through the sharing of the truth which is embodied in
each of us, in what might be called the scripture of our own
lives.(13)
In other words, Sacraments represent the fact that our
lives, the events and circumstances of life, become the medium of
God revelation.
But the Presiding Bishop is not simply content
to make our lives,
the community, or events and circumstances, the only revelation.
In the end, he wants everything to be revelatory, and this
general revelation has the same status as Scripture, or
tradition, or reason, or anything for that matter.
Anglican spirituality also involves a "graced
pragmatism," a reasonableness conformed to the mind of
Christ, a capacity for "testing the spirits" (1 John
4:1) of our contemporary world and existence in order to hear and
be faithful to Christ the Word who can speak and reveal himself
in the scripture of our own lives and experience as well as the
Bible, the sacraments, and the ongoing life of the Church.(14)
For it is the Spirit who works the presence of Christ in us using
the events and circumstances of our lives and experience. And by
virtue of the Spirit's driving yet subtle motion, we find
ourselves caught up into what William Law, an 18th Century
Anglican Mystic calls "the process of Christ."(15)
By means of all created things, without exception, the Divine
assails us, penetrates us and molds us." This sentence from
Teilhard de Chardin bears witness to the ever unfolding process
of Christ unleashed by the Ascension and carried out
unremittingly by the Spirit, in us, in others and in the whole of
creation.(16)
In these quotations the Presiding Bishop
lists the following
as revelatory: the contemporary world, existence, the scripture
of our lives, experience, the Bible, the church, events and
circumstances, other people, and all created things. At no
point, however, does the Presiding Bishop ever state which of all
these sources of revelation has priority. Is the Bible supreme?
is the Church? is it existence, the whole of creation, the world?
Are all equal? Were he to tell us which if any
of these sources
has priority, his real theology would become evident. No, he
simply blends them all together as revelatory forms, and thereby
tacitly, he affirms them all equally.
Truth is Personal Not
"Propositional"
Or
Persons Exist Beyond Language
Once the Presiding Bishop affirms that "truth" is
given in experience as discerned by the Spirit in community, he
must face the fact that different members of the community have
different versions of truth. In classical Anglicanism,
disagreements were settled by interpreting Scripture in the light
of the great tradition. One can clearly see this in Hooker, for
example. He disagreed with his Puritan opponents, but both he
and they held to the priority of Scripture and therefore there
was a
basis for debate. If, however, the ultimate standard is the
experience of community members, then there is nothing beyond the
community to which one can appeal. Disagreements simply become
"my truth" over against "your truth."
Dialogue, sharing personal truth, and finally politics, are the
way differences are "settled," rather than study,
immersion in, and appeal to the tradition.
One way out of this impasse is to let truth be
personal and not
propositional. In this view, each person possesses a depth that
refuses to be circumscribed by verbal description. This allows
us to exist in harmonious relation as persons, even though we
disagree in terms of how we each express our own personal truths.
This holds for Christ as well. According to the
Presiding
Bishop, the risen Jesus is a person who transcends all
propositional formulations. Christ is beyond images and
language, and therefore, knowledge of Christ becomes a continual
process of breaking old images for the sake of new formulations,
which in turn must give way to deeper revelations. This process
ultimately culminates in personal identity with Christ beyond
words, dogma, and propositions. Such a Christ is ideally suited
to harmonize all contradictory and partial truths held by the
baptized. These are received into a mystical whole since Christ
transcends yet includes them all in his body the church. In this
way, we can be mystically and personally one, even thought we may
violently disagree over "details."
From this perspective, the real sin is not
heresy but schism,
refusal to recognize that all are one in Christ by virtue of our
baptism. It enables all to believe as they wish yet be one,
provided that all are engaged in the rigorous process of breaking
stereotypes that exclude and divide.
What the Spirit takes from Christ is not information but life,
life expressed as love and realized in the intimacy of communion
whereby Christ dwells in us and we in him. In this way the
Spirit works the "process of Christ" in us, not all at
once but over time.(17)
The word isn't just what Jesus says, but the word signifies his
whole person. If we make our homes in Christ - just as Christ
through Scripture and the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist,
seeks to "dwell in us as we in him" - then we will
truly be disciples. That is, we will be teachable and available
to the insistent motions of the Spirit who leads us and forms us
over time through the events and experiences which accost us and
demand to be lived.
In this way, we will come to know the truth - not as a series of
propositions but as the inmost possession of our souls. And, in
that process of knowing, we discover our freedom: freedom from
our distortions, from fears, untruths, and "the dullness of
our blinded sight," as the ancient hymn "Veni
Creator" expresses it.(18)
Notice what these two quotations say. In
the first, there
is an implied contrast between "information" and
"life." Information is expressed in language, but life
is expressed personally. Knowledge of Christ, life in Christ, is
not a matter of "information," but personal communion
or even identity between Christ and the soul. This identity is
beyond words since words only convey "information."
In the second quotation, the "word isn't
just what Jesus
says." Rather than words, the truth is simply defined as
the person, the "whole person." Once again, knowing
Christ is a personal encounter, given in experience, and this
intimate personal knowledge is not "a series of propositions
but as the inmost possession of our souls." In other words,
truth is given through a spiritual process of inner discovery of
one's depths. To see Christ in others and ourselves requires a
process of purification so that we become free from
"distortions," "fears" and
"untruths." Let us consider another example.
For me, homosexuality is not primarily a cause or an issue: it is
a matter of men and women I know, respect and love, and whose
lives bear ample witness to the fruits of the Spirit as
enumerated in Galatians 5:22. It is about people with whom I
have shared ministry and friendship, whose many gifts have
enriched my life and continue to bless and upbuild the
Church.(19)
This paragraph contrasts two ways of
understanding
homosexuality. On one hand there are those who view
homosexuality as a "cause or an issue." These two
terms caricature the traditionalist belief that one can discover
the morality of homosexual behavior by studying Scripture, or by
an appeal to a form of knowledge that isn't "personal."
On the other hand, the Presiding Bishop believes
that truth is
personal, more than language, more than biblical injunctions,
more than the tradition of the church, but a "matter of men
and women I know, respect and love." For the Presiding
Bishop, this personal form of "truth" is the decisive
form of knowing. It is one of the additions of John 16:12-14,
given by the risen Christ in the personal truth of homosexual
persons. Let us decode another statement.
Indeed the Bible broadly conceived is a sacrament: it is
"alive and active, sharper than a two edged sword"
because Christ is alive and active and truly present in the
scriptural word. The risen One who opened the scriptures to his
downcast disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) continues to
make our hearts burn within us as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of
truth, draws from what is Christ's (John 16:14) and makes it
known to us in the context of our own life and experience.(20)
What is being said here? On the surface,
this statement
seems innocuous enough. Christians believe that Christ is living
and active and present in the scriptural word. In the light of
the whole of the Presiding Bishop's writings, however, the terms
"risen One" and "alive and active" are the
Presiding Bishop's way of saying that Christ is personal and
alive and that his life is distinct from the scriptural word.
When the risen One enters our hearts and makes them burn, we
discover that the biblical words have a meaning that lies beyond
the biblical word, in our hearts where Christ burns. This deep
truth is personal, something that can only be known in the
personal "context of our own life and experiences." In
other words, Christ reveals himself beyond Scripture as he
"continues to make our hearts burn" in the personal
lives of believers. Here is another typical statement.
Resurrection is not a theological proposition but a fact of life.
For Mary Magdalene and the other women who came early to the tomb
with their spices, resurrection was an assault upon everything
they knew; it was the overturning of all order and
predictability.(21)
In this statement, the Presiding Bishop
contrasts "a
theological proposition" with a "fact of life,"
with the obvious implication that life is more than theological
propositions. In fact, life is "an assault upon
everything" we know, the "overturning of all order and
predictability." The purpose of these statements is to
encourage the church to turn away from the predictable, the
tradition we once learned from the church and Scripture, in order
to discover the new revelation we find in the other.
All Contradictions Harmonized in the
Risen Christ
Or
God Transcends All Differences
Since Christ is personal, since language never fully grasps
personal reality, Christ can harmonize all contradictions since
he lies beyond yet includes them all. One of the clearest
expressions of this belief is the Presiding Bishop's article on
Canterbury Cathedral. For him, it is an analogy of the church in
Christ. Composed of architectural styles from many centuries,
its columns and buttresses lean against and oppose each other,
yet their very opposition contributes to the glory and unity of
the overall design. "One portion has been added to another,
and the ever-expanding whole is bonded and knit together through
a dynamic of stress and counterstress, by one stone pressing
against another and thereby producing an overall state of
equilibrium and concord."(22) Once the analogy is in place,
he then comments,
How we all fit together, how our singularities are made sense of,
how our divergent views and different understandings of God's
intent are reconciled passes all understanding. All that we can
do is to travel on in faith and trust, knowing that all
contradictions and paradoxes and seemingly irreconcilable truths
- which seem both consistent and inconsistent with Scripture --
are brought together in the larger and all embracing truth of
Christ, which, by Christ's own words, has yet to be fully drawn
forth and known.
Meanwhile, in our desire for certitude, for answers to deliver us
from the pain and uncertainty of living the questions, we declare
that we have arrived at our destination - the answer - only to
find that what we considered resolved and settled continues to
present itself and refuses to go away until the Spirit of Truth,
who draws all things from the mind and heart of the risen Christ,
leads us "into all the truth," and we find that all the
contradictions and divergent perspectives are reconciled in
Christ who is the truth.(23)
How "different views and different
understandings of
God's intent" are reconciled "passes all
understanding" since the truth of Christ is personal,
mystical, harmonizing all paradoxes and contradictions, both
"consistent and inconsistent with Scripture."
The quotation also contrasts its mystical way of
knowing with
truth that says yes and no, this but not that, right and wrong.
The motivation for this form of truth is a "desire for
certitude," a need for "answers," produced by an
inability to take the "pain and uncertainty of living the
questions." Once these spiritual obstacles are overcome,
authentic lovers of Truth will discover that they are always in
process as the Spirit enables them to arrive at the mystical
vision in which all "contradictions and divergent
perspectives are reconciled in Christ who is the truth." In
short, truth is personal, not given in language. Consider this
comment.
What would happen if instead of leading with our opinions fully
formed and our conclusions smartly arrayed, we addressed one
another as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, ... Are we
afraid that if we asked such questions we might have to modify
our position and make room for the ambiguity and paradox another
person's truth might represent?(24)
This comment contrasts those who lead with
"opinions fully
formed," with conclusions "smartly arrayed," with
those who grasp the fact that the risen Christ transcends all
differences, and therefore, is able to include ambiguity and all
sides of the paradoxical.
Another example, one of many, is the Presiding
Bishop's sermon on
ecumenism. Its primary theme is that authentic spirituality
entails the progressive unification of humanity in Christ beyond
all "disparities and seeming contradictions." Notice
in the subsequent quotation how those who would draw lines, make
boundaries, are considered pharisaical.
Was this an instance of the Divine imagination and fullness, able
to embrace and enfold disparities and seeming contradictions, or
was I seeing the shadow side of incarnation wherein the
historical traditions which convey our various apprehensions of
the Good News become fortresses of our own singularity and allow
us to pray with the Pharisee in the Gospel of Luke, "God, I
thank you that I am not like others?"(25)
Theologically, it is the incarnation, the
fact that God can
act and speak concretely, that makes the Christian faith a matter
of words, doctrine, theological propositions. The Presiding
Bishop does not acknowledge the "singularity" of
Christian truth. Rather, he associates it with the "shadow
side of incarnation." The Presiding Bishop's statements are
so unequivocal on this matter that I will take leave of this
subject and invite the reader to read the Presiding Bishop's
writings for further references.
There is no
Justification
Scripture presents Jesus as the one who
died for our sins
and thereby justified us before God. This important hope lies at
the center of the Christian faith. This hope cannot be found in
the writings of the Presiding Bishop, at least in the corpus I
found electronically. How can we account for the omission of
justification, and what are its pastoral implications?
Theologically, justification and sanctification
can be
distinguished because the Lord Jesus who died to justify us
before God is distinct from yet related to the Spirit who
sanctifies each person and the church. If however, Christ and
the deep self are really one, then Christ's death on the cross is
simply a symbol for something that occurs in us. His death does
not set us right with God. Rather, it symbolizes our death to
inadequate images and biases on the road to intimate communion
with the other. That is the real meaning of the cross, not that
Christ died for us, but rather, his death is a symbol of the
spiritual death that each of us must embody as we become one with
each other and with Christ in each other.
The Presiding Bishop interprets virtually every
Christian concept
-- prayer, Easter, baptism, the cross, ecumenism, eucharist,
Advent -- as a call to ridding ourselves of our distorted images
on the road to loving, accepting, and embracing the other. That
is the real meaning of the cross. Here are only a few of many
examples. In the context of Advent, he comments.
While these images may give us security, they also keep us from
embracing the larger vision. They keep us from embracing the
vision of wholeness and reconciliation which corresponds to God's
unfolding fullness. They can blind us to how God continues to
act in the world. They keep us from seeing the fullness of God
which alone can heal and reconcile all things.(26)
The Spirit is connected with distorted images.
Discernment of the authentic motions of the Spirit involves all
of us who have been baptized into Christ. It is always a
corporate undertaking involving risk, struggle, dislocation,
conflict, endurance, generosity of spirit, and, above all,
continual repentance: turning away from our own limited
perspectives and partial truths to the ever unfolding mystery of
the truth as it is in Christ.(27)
Easter is connected to expanding our vision with
these words.
The question I am then bidden to ask myself is, "How am I
resisting Christ's grasp? In what ways do I prefer the security
of my limited and constricted vision of life, of the Church, of
my own place in the risen Christ's ever-unfolding and
all-embracing ministry of reconciliation, reordering and making
all things new? In what ways do I resist being forcibly pulled
out of my places of confinement into the deathless freedom of
Christ?"(28)
Baptism is connected with breaking down images.
The baptismal Covenant asks us to repent and return to God's
love, to repent our judgements, our biases, our exclusions, our
lack of imagination, our unwillingness to be loved and to
love.(29)
Consider this final quotation.
What is a purified and transformed heart? St. Isaac of Nineveh,
a witness from the 7th Century, gives us this answer: "It is
a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation --- for
humankind, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for
every creature ... for the reptiles too ..." It is a heart
from which "a great compassion ... rises up endlessly."
In more contemporary terms, it is a heart open the paradoxes and
contradictions of life; it is a heart that can embrace and
reconcile the birds and the beasts, as well as reptiles and
demons, however we might define them. A transformed heart is a
heart that has been cracked open by God's love ... A
compassionate heart is a baptized, born again heart, a purified
and transformed and discerning heart open to everyone and
everything, a heart of communion that can embrace all sorts and
conditions of humanity and the world around us, a heart that
burns with God's own love for the whole mix and muddle of the
world. It is a faithful heart capable of rebuilding the Church
in the service of the Gospel for the sake of the world, over and
over and over again.(30)
For orthodox thought, we are justified
before God by Jesus
Christ because Jesus Christ is different from us, and did
something for us that we could not do for ourselves. For the
Presiding Bishop, however, Christ is really each of us in the
depths of ourselves, felt when "our hearts burn within
us." Therefore, each of us, not Christ for us, must be
"open to everyone and everything." Everyone, not
Christ the justifier, must "embrace and reconcile the birds
and the beasts, as well as reptiles and demons." Each and
every individual, not Christ their righteousness, must
"embrace all sorts and conditions of humanity."
The pastoral consequences of this are
horrendous. Human beings
simply cannot do this. To do this is to open oneself up to every
evil and contrary thing. There are no limits here. No
boundaries. There is no thanksgiving for what Jesus did that no
one else can do, but rather, everyone is called to what do Jesus
did for everyone else. For the Presiding Bishop, Jesus did not
die for all so that we might have peace with God and each other.
No, he died that all might imitate him and thereby die for each
other.
Of course, the church has always recognized that
the Holy Spirit
sanctifies the faithful. The Presiding Bishop is right to see
this. But even here there are limits. There is what Jesus
Christ did and does, justification, and there is what Christians
do, sanctification as a work of the Spirit. The two are not the
same. Jesus Christ is the reconciler of the world. The response
of faith is to acknowledge what he did, proclaim it to all, and
then only in a very limited and broken way, seek to love others
as a reflection of his work. In the end, for the Presiding
Bishop, Christ's death on the cross is simply a symbol for what
each and every one of us must do for ourselves.
I would ask the reader to get hold of the
Presiding Bishop's
writings and read them. Whenever he speaks of Jesus' cross and
resurrection, look to see if he speaks of justification or
whether he uses Jesus' cross as a example or metaphor for what we
ourselves must do.
Theological Analysis
Theologically, the Presiding Bishop cannot and does not
distinguish between creation and incarnation. This follows
logically from what we have shown before, namely, that by
"means of all created things, without exception, the Divine
assails us, penetrates us and molds us," that the events and
circumstance of life have equal revelatory validity with
Scripture, that Sacraments symbolize that the church and all of
creation is revelatory, that the depths of our created selves are
revelatory, and that the community focuses that universal
revelation through its own personal encounters.
Since creation and incarnation are one, all
things are equally
revelatory and the experience of all created things gives truth.
In this view, incarnation proclaims that all is revelatory, and
therefore, the revealing power of incarnation is simply that of
creation. This is a type of mystical paganism. All of creation
becomes holy since the divine (the risen Christ) is the ground of
and revealed in all things. That is paganism. Secondly, the
ground of all things, the risen Christ, is known mystically,
beyond finite knowing since persons transcend language. That is
the mystical aspect.
This mystical pagan vision has a
"Christian" veneer due
to the frequent use of the terms "Spirit," "risen
Christ," "community," along with a number of other
Christian terms such as "prayer," "baptism,"
and so forth. Theologically, however, these terms are
reinterpreted in terms of the overall vision, that of the risen
Christ as revelatory source with the Spirit enabling the
community to see Christ in all things. Of course, the community
itself is one thing among many revelatory things. The Presiding
Bishop frequently speaks of the Spirit as revealing Christ in the
community. At other times, he speaks of the Spirit revealing
Christ in general experience.
That is, we will be teachable and available to the insistent
motions of the Spirit who leads us and forms us over time through
the events and experiences which accost us and demand to be
lived. ... In this way, we will give room to the word of Christ
who is the Word, and who continues to address us in the Spirit.
The Spirit draws from what is Christ's and declares it to us
(John 16:13-14).(31)
What I am describing requires discernment and a testing of the
spirits (1 John 4:1). Continual discernment is necessary lest a
personal or group agenda make us so zealous and single-minded in
the name of one cause that a sense of God's larger purpose is
lost. Such zealousness renders us unable or unwilling to give
room to what the Spirit of truth may be trying to declare through
the voices and lived word of others who are also limbs - through
very different limbs - of Christ's risen body the Church.(32)
In the first quotation, the Spirit comes
from experience,
events and circumstances which "demand to be lived."
This "demand" is the Word, the risen Christ. In this
way, experience becomes the voice of Christ, God speaking his
Word to us. I recently asked a biblical scholar, Dr. Chris
Seitz, if there was a single passage in Scripture which claimed
that general experience was the Word of God, the Word that came
to the prophets and became incarnate in Jesus Christ. His answer
was "No." "The heavens declare the glory of
God," (Psalm 19:1), but the heavens do not say, "Thus
saith the Lord," and then deliver his personal address to
us.
In the second quotation, the Spirit is
revealed
"through the voices and lived word of others who are also
limbs - through very different limbs - of Christ's risen body the
Church." Those who don't see this, who think there are
boundaries and limits, are labeled "single-minded in the
name of one cause." Their "zealousness" prevents
them from hearing the "voices and lived word of others"
who are "different." These persons lose the
"larger purpose," namely that the risen Christ is large
enough to include and reconcile all differences.
In one sense, this picture doesn't
correspond neatly to any
of the ancient heresies, although it is certainly heretical.
Perhaps it can be characterized as a modification of the modalist
heresy. The modalist heresy claimed that the distinctions
between the Father, Son, and Spirit were only appearances. In
the final analysis, all three persons of the Trinity were really
one divine ground. The Presiding Bishop shares critical aspects
of his heresy. Within God, he cannot distinguish the Father who
creates from the Son who became incarnate since he cannot
distinguish between creation and incarnation.
On the other hand, he puts a rather unusual
spin on things
by distinguishing between the risen Christ and the Spirit. The
risen Christ is the cosmic ground or "sky" who
reconciles all things, but the Spirit is the one who actualizes
this ultimate harmony through an on-going process of shattering
images on the way to the sublime. As a result, his theology has
an historical or eschatological component. Ultimately, however,
by feel and sense, all things are one, and this modalistic aspect
will often come to the fore.
Christ's going away does not stand on its own; it is part of the
larger reality of resurrection whereby all things, including our
lives in their complexity and ambiguity, are caught up into
Christ. Rising from the dead, ascending to the Father and
sending the Holy Spirit are all one continuous act of being
present to, with, and through the apostles. And it is as Christ's
disciples live out Christ's command to 'Feed my sheep' that they,
in the very act of speaking or acting in Christ's name, know that
Christ is with them and that they are in Christ.(33)
Here the Father is associated with Christ
and the Spirit as
the one transcendent reality available to all things as they are
"caught up into Christ." In this view, there is only
one divine reality, the risen Christ who underlies and is
revealed in all things. It is a matter of indifference whether
one calls this ultimate reality God, the risen Christ, the
Father, the Spirit, all three names, or whatever. There is only
one final undifferentiated reality because all three persons of
the Trinity are "one continuous act of being present to,
with, and through the apostles."
This differs from the Creed, which
understands human beings
as created by the Father, saved by the Son, and formed into the
church by the Spirit. For orthodoxy, the persons of the Trinity
are distinguished because they do distinct yet related things.
For the Presiding Bishop, however, all "three" persons
of the Trinity do one thing: they are the exalted source of all
things, including the apostles, "present to, with, and
through" them. This is modalism. Consider this.
Love in this context is not a feeling, but a capacity for
relationship, a relationship of mutuality and self-giving which
has its perfect expression in the inner life of the Trinity in
which Father, Son and Holy Spirit give and receive from one
another in an unceasing circle dance of dispossession. To be
baptized is to be drawn into this circle and to find that our
life is no longer our own, not because it has been taken away,
but because it has been taken up into Christ through the Holy
Spirit, the minister of communion and relationship, who
actualizes the love of God in our hearts understood as the core
and center of our being.(34)
This is an interesting quotation. Here
baptism draws one
into the "circle dance" of the Trinity which is
equivalent to being "taken up into Christ through the Holy
Spirit." The two realities, the circle dance of the Trinity
and the risen Christ, are essentially one thing--the final
reality of God. This is modalism, the sense that Christ and the
other persons of the Trinity are not distinct from each other.
But unlike modalism, and inconsistently, the
quotation
distinguishes between the Spirit and the risen Christ. This is
because the Spirit is the "minister of communion and
relationship," which, in light of the whole of the Presiding
Bishop's thought, means the process of breaking images on the way
to mystical union with Christ and the other. In this way one
enters the triune dance, or equivalently, the risen Christ.
Except for a few common terms, this perspective
has little or
nothing to do with the orthodoxy of the Creed. According to the
Creed, the persons of the Trinity are not mutually related in a
circle dance. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, not
vice-versa. The Spirit proceeds from both, never the other way
around. Rather than a circle dance, the relations between the
persons of the Trinity are unequal because each person of the
Trinity does different yet related things. The Father is pure
origin, the creator of the universe, the One who eternally begets
the Son. The Son is begotten, the one who redeems a corrupted
creation. The Spirit proceeds from both, creates the church, and
will bring the life of the world to come.
In the above quotation, however, all
inner-triune relations are
mutual in the circle dance. This reflects the Presiding Bishop's
feeling for harmony in which all things are reconciled and all
distinctions fade away. This is the modalistic instinct.
In sum, the Presiding Bishop's thinking is
essentially
modalistic, but not consistently. He erases the difference
between Father and Son, yet distinguishes between the risen
Christ and the Spirit. Nevertheless, his feeling that all things
are ultimately reconciled, all paradoxes included, all
differences harmonized by something that transcends them, means
that real differences between the persons of the Godhead cannot
ultimately exist in God. This is modalism.
This heresy is fatal because it denies that the
Father, Son, and
Spirit are distinct from each other. If this be true, if God's
acts in creation, incarnation, and world to come are not distinct
from each other, then God did nothing unique and distinctive in
Jesus Christ.
Nor can the Presiding Bishop have any true doctrine of
incarnation. The doctrine of the incarnation, the two-fold
nature of Jesus Christ, depends upon Father and Son both being
God and both being distinct as persons within God. Once that
claim was established in the battle against Arius, the question
arose as to how the Son or Word who is God could be incarnate in
the man Jesus.
For the Presiding Bishop, however, Father
and Son, creation
and incarnation, are essentially one. Or, to put it another way,
the only unique thing about God's presence in Christ is to tell
us that God is present in everything. In other words, Jesus is
really nothing more than a symbol for God's general presence.
The Presiding Bishop calls his perspective "profoundly
incarnational." By this he means that there is no real
difference between God's presence in Word and Sacrament which
reflect incarnation, and God's general presence in creation, in
the "events and circumstances" of life.
Anglican spirituality is a fruit of our profoundly incarnational
theology, and has to do with what the 18th century priest-mystic,
William Law, calls "the process of Christ." Through
daily encounters with the risen One in word and sacrament, and in
the events and circumstances that challenge and mold us, we are
transformed and conformed to the pattern of Christ.(35)
Further, in biblical thought, a person is
known by their
words and deeds. A person's word is simply the person in another
form, but made public, available for knowing. This applies to
God as well. God is known by his Word that became incarnate in
Jesus Christ. This incarnate Word was Jesus' words and deeds,
and by means of this Word God was known.
Suppose that truth is personal and not
"propositional." Then, if Christ is not given in his
words, but only as our "hearts burn within us," then
the real Christ is a mystic reality beyond his words and deeds.
Or, to put it another way, God is not really present in his Word,
but beyond his Word in a union that leaves his Word behind.
There are several ways to characterize this
non-verbal way
of understanding God. It could perhaps be seen as a form of
Arianism in which the "Word" of God is simply a
creature, outside of God, so that human words and deeds,
including those of Jesus, do not really reveal God. This would
enable all human opinions and words to be in final harmony with
each other since God lies beyond the finite contraries of
language. Or, perhaps it is a form of modalism in which terms
like "Father," "Son," and "Spirit"
cannot ultimately be defined over against each other since all
differences fade away in the mystic One beyond personal
distinctions.
The Consequences
What are the consequences of this theological perspective?
I will enumerate a few of them.
First, those who follow this vision will lose the Lord Jesus
known in Word and Sacrament. Jesus Christ is not ourselves in
the depth of ourselves. He is not a product of experience. He
is not a general feature of the created world. Incarnation is
not creation. Jesus Christ is Lord, and he can only be Lord if
he is different from us and different from the rest of creation.
When Jesus Christ is ourselves in the depths of ourselves, we
become the Lord and Christ is lost. That is the first and most
horrible casualty of the Presiding Bishop's doctrine.
Secondly, there is no salvation. The
Christian faith
depends upon God doing something unique in Jesus Christ. In
Christ he does something he does nowhere else -- not in creation,
not in the depths of ourselves, not in other great figures. In
Jesus Christ, God saves. If creation is incarnation, then Jesus
Christ is like all others and we have no savior.
Thirdly, there are no limits. The only
limit is to draw
limits. I will not spell out the consequences of life without
boundaries. They should be obvious. In the end, the church will
be incapable of protecting itself from every strange and contrary
doctrine, every sinful and evil act, since all of these must be
included -- the birds, the beasts, the demons, and the reptiles -
- into the Christian fold.
Fourth, in spite of language to the
contrary, we can never
know a personal God. To be a person in relation implies that the
other is objectively distinct from us, over against us, different
from us. For the Presiding Bishop, the risen Christ is simply
ourselves in the depths of ourselves.
Fifth, God can never speak a "Thou
Shalt" or
"Thou shalt not" since this would imply that God is
something other than ourselves in the depths of ourselves. Even
more, an ethical command from God would have verbal content.
Nevertheless, if God is beyond propositional limitations, then
God cannot really say anything to us, not even something as
simple as "I love you."
Sixth, real sin is denied since behavior
will inevitably be
judged by the "scripture of our own lives" rather than
the living Word of the Bible.
Finally, since truth is really community
experience, there
are no objective standards outside the community itself. As a
result, disagreements cannot be settled by an analysis of
external standards such as Scripture interpreted by the
tradition. No, disagreements can only be settled by politics, by
resolutions that embody more or less what the majority more or
less think. When this happens, and apparently it happened at the
last General Convention, certain persons will, in spite of the
Presiding Bishop's claim to the contrary, be excluded. Or, to
put it another way, this so-called inclusive vision will end by
being as rigid and exclusive as the "isms" it seeks to
deny.
In this regard, I am in favor of boundaries
and of
exclusion. But only the right sort of exclusion. For the
Presiding Bishop, there is no recourse for the excluded, no
foundation upon which to stand. They cannot claim Scripture, or
tradition, or reason, or anything, as their hope or guide, for
the only truth is community. Once excluded by the community,
such persons have no standards by which to seek appeal, since the
only court of appeal has denied them. The Presiding Bishop's
vision will not reconcile us in Christ beyond all contradiction.
Instead, it will only lead to division with no viable way of
reconciliation.
How could it be that this teaching could
actually claim the
allegiance of so many in the church, including a great many
bishops and priests who should have some minimum of theological
insight? That question, of course, can be answered from many
angles. One important response would be to analyze the role of
theological education in the church today. From that viewpoint,
I would claim that much of the church has been led astray by a
false theology that has been around since Schleiermacher, one
that is taught in most of our Episcopal seminaries.
There are, however, other reasons for the
Presiding Bishop's
prominence. Our culture, our church, has lost the ability to
think theologically, critically, and prayerfully. Image, style,
and feeling are what resonate and create success, whether in the
church or in the world. I will address that matter in another
essay, an essay on the concept of "voice" in the writings of the
Presiding Bishop. link For now,
however, it must be said that if the Presiding Bishop's
theological perspective is accepted and implemented, it will be
the ruin of the church.
Endnotes
1. "Ecumenism" - William Reed Huntington Memorial
Sermon, September 30, 1998.
2. Ascension Day Sermon.
3. Ascension Day Sermon.
4. Ascension Day Sermon.
5. 17 August 1998, Letter to the editor: The New York Times.
6 17 August 1998, Letter to the editor: The Wall Street
Journal.
7. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
8. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
9. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
10. Ascension Day Sermon, May 21, 1998, Trinity Church, Wall
Street.
11. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
12. "Ecumenism" - William Reed Huntington Memorial
Sermon, September 30, 1998.
13. Sermon at the Service of Investiture of the XXV Presiding
Bishop.
14. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
15. Ascension Day Sermon.
16. Ascension Day Sermon.
17. Ascension Day Sermon, May 21, 1998, Trinity Church, Wall
Street.
18. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
19. Canterbury Cathedral, A letter to the Episcopal Church,
August 14, 1998.
20. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
21. Easter Message from the Presiding Bishop.
22. Glimpses of the Eternal Design.
23. Glimpses of the Eternal Design, The Presiding Bishop's
Column, September, 1998.
24. Sermon at the Service of Investiture of the XXV Presiding
Bishop, Washington National Cathedral, January 10, 1998.
25. "Ecumenism" - William Reed Huntington Memorial
Sermon Reed Huntington Memorial Sermon, September 30, 1998,
Grace Church, New York City.
26. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
27. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
28. The Presiding Bishop's Easter Season Message, Eastertide
1998.
29. 10 January 1999 - Washington National Cathedral Sermon.
30. Sermon at the Service of Investiture of the XXV Presiding
Bishop.
31. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
32. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
33. Ascension Day Sermon.
34. 10 January 1999 - Washington National Cathedral Sermon.
35. Essay on Anglican Spirituality.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
Copyright, January, 2002.
robertsanders@iglide.net
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