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  • An Anglican Divine Gets the Point

    Growing up at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church was my first exposure for the rector to have an earned doctorate.     That exposure came from Hunsdon Cary, who “oversaw” the beginning of the Church Mouse resale shop and whose relatives got the property boot from Jon Bruno.  This has generally not been the case with the churches I have haunted since that time.

    St. Michael’s Church, a charismatic Anglican church in Chattanooga, TN, is graced with the Rev. Dr. C. Bruce Hilbert as a permanent deacon.  Recently Pointwise, a firm in Dallas that specialises in grid generation, featured Bruce on their blog as a user of their software, and congratulations are in order.

    But that in turn brings up another point: Bruce’s doctorate is in Computational Engineering, the same as mine.  For those of you who are getting nervous about stuff like this, it’s a relief.  Bruce is one of those Anglican divines who gets the point in every sense of the word, because we all know what happens when church becomes pointless.

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  • Painting Ourselves into a Corner at "The Shack"

    If our political chaos isn’t enough to upset everyone, now we have the film version of William Taylor’s The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity.  It’s created a great deal of controversy over its implied universalism, it’s decidedly LDS portrayal of God as three embodied beings, etc.

    Personally the heart of the matter centres around the work’s theodicy.  I covered the same ground back in January in my piece on Bart Campolo, where I took a swipe at Evangelical Christianity’s lame attempt to “solve” this problem.  In that epic, Campolo’s critical moment with God came after a hard bicycle accident.  As the NYT pointed out, Campolo had been raised in world where “his religion told him that a benevolent God controlled every last thing that happens on earth.”  When things didn’t turn out as he had been led to believe, he bailed.

    Fortunately, the secular side of my upbringing immunised me from this kind of thinking:

    For me personally, it’s an entirely different ball game.  If I had ever asked the question at home  (and I can’t recall I ever did) “Why do bad things happen to good people,” the answer I probably would have gotten was, “So what? You just have to tough it out, and if you can’t, it’s too bad.”  And, as I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog, the home I grew up in was anything but an “ideal” Christian home.  The difference between the two is significant.  While Campolo’s concept on the existence of evil focused on God, the one I was presented with focused on me.

    Faced with adversity, Campolo left Christianity; Taylor’s response, in effect, is to reinvent Christianity to solve the theodicy problem of Evangelicalism’s own making.  But from my standpoint the reality of life doesn’t justify either one:

    But hurdle I did, first because God came to me, and second because I never saw in the Scriptures the idea that this world was going to be perfect, and that eternity was the most important goal and would overshadow the pains of this life.  Eternal life was one the one thing that God could give me that the world could not.  But perhaps that all was because I looked at the Scriptures informed by the secular framework I was raised in.  The theodicy issue, such an obsession with so many, was never a big deal for me.  If these humanists were such great people, why didn’t they solve the problem of evil in the world?

    Better answers are called for here, but better answers are in short supply in our culture today.  Evangelicalism has painted itself into a corner on the theodicy issue, and it wants to get out of the shack it needs to do more than just mess the floor up on the way out.

  • The First Duty of a Christian Preacher

    A pithy summary from R. de la Broise, Bossuet and the Bible, 1890, pp. 160-1:

    “To preach the word of God, to go hear the word of God,” these are the expressive words of the Christian language.  They neatly outline one of the distinct characteristics of preaching, one of the points which make the genre absolutely proper to Christianity, and nothing else in antiquity corresponds to it.  In the Christian Church, the Bible is the “word of God,” and the preacher is only its herald and interpreter; his first duty is to know it well, to also know well the most established commentaries, and to transmit it without alteration or corruption; his originality, to distribute it a propos, to take from this bottomless treasure that which meets the circumstances and the hearer, to make heard from this divine word justly what is necessary, and from there appropriate applications.

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  • Jack Miffleton: With Skins and Steel

    World Library  WLSM-36-SM  (1968)

    Jack Miffleton started out at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.  That shouldn’t be strange to regulars on this blog: it was also the starting point of the trio who produced Songs for the Masses.  It’s a pedigree that has largely been forgotten.  And that’s sad; this is a good folk production that needs a revival.

    The title wouldn’t pass muster in this obsessive day of ours, but the “skins” part refers to percussion, something that didn’t always pass muster in a day when percussion was thought in some quarters to be secular at best and pagan at worst.  But Miffleton and his musicians make good use of it; the album is reminiscent, more than anything else, of God Unlimited, although some of the pieces echo The Keyhole as well.  There are some very powerful pieces on the album (“Cry Alice.”)  The Mass propers are at a minimum here.

    If you’re looking to break out of the #straightouttairondale mould fashionable these days, this is an album you should consider.  The recording is out of distribution but the sheet music is definitely available and can be found here.

    My thanks to Dennis for this music.

    The songs:

    1. Well, It’s A New Day
    2. The Wind Blows
    3. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
    4. Yours Is The Kingdom
    5. Cry Alice
    6. Alleluia Response
    7. I’m The Good Shepherd
    8. Alle, Alle
    9. Lord, I’ve Come To Your Garden
    10. I Am The Bread
    11. Up To Jerusalem
    12. There Are But Three Things
    13. It Is My Faith
    14. But Then Comes The Morning
    15. I’m Ready To Follow

    More Music

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  • Soils in Construction, Now at Waveland

    It’s official: the construction management textbook Soils in Construction, Fifth Edition by W.L. Schroeder, S.E. Dickenson and D.C. Warrington is now at Waveland Press. As someone who has dealt with contractors for his entire working career, I know that an understanding of the essentials of soil mechanics and foundations is crucial for successful–and profitable–completion of […]

    via Soils in Construction, Now at Waveland — vulcanhammer.net

  • Some Lessons for Pentecostals from the "Recent Anglican War"

    Those of you who are regular followers know that I have followed/participated in what I call the “Anglican Revolt,” a term which comes from a North American perspective.  Brewing for years, in 2003 it was detonated in full force by the ordination of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man who subsequently went into and out of same-sex civil marriage, as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.  That event was the major impetus in ultimately birthing the Anglican Church in North America (ANCA,) and many of the events between those two were well covered on this blog.

    Those of us with roots in Anglicanism and who have attempted to suppress amnesia on the subject know that the left bent of the Episcopal Church is of long-standing, that we’ve been through (and been a part of) a membership bleed before, and that the Episcopal Church’s abandonment of the basics of Christianity–both those about sex and those which don’t–has been a major reason the church has shrunk and continues to shrink.

    Now, it seems, those same disputes have come to the Pentecostal world, with Urshan College giving the Society of Pentecostal Studies (SPS) the boot as a venue for their gathering because the SPS had the bad taste to allow a prominent LGBT activist on the program.  (Pentecostals will have to excuse my Palm Beachy characterisation of things, you like to celebrate roots, those are mine.)  This has led to a firestorm on the “online trash fire” that Facebook has become.  For those of us who have marched through this battlefield with the Anglicans, it’s “déja vu all over again.”

    I think at this point it would be worthwhile for Pentecostals to draw some lessons from the experience of others, while at the same time highlighting some differences too.  I dealt with this issue from a more general Evangelical perspective two years ago, but some more thoughts are as follows:

    • The Christian sexual ethic is non-negotiable.  People find this difficult because they think that Christianity is a popularity contest, and since we live in a society where people are defined by what they do with their genitals and how often they do it, we must go with the flow to survive.  But Our Lord and his Apostles laid down a standard which is really higher than the one we see counselled in our churches; we either have to make a serious attempt to live it (I’m not talking about politics at this point) or stop professing and calling ourselves Christians.
    • Don’t obscure the issues with gaudy rhetoric.  In the Anglican world that means the infamous “Anglican fudge,” and I’ve called that out more than once.  The Anglicans have tried to paper over their differences with it, and it hasn’t worked.  In the Pentecostal world we see a similar thing where people adopt a “spiritual” form of rhetoric, which obscures the substance (or lack of it) of what they are really saying and what they really believe.  In addition to opening oneself up to the charge of being duplicitous, this kind of thing only delays getting to the bottom of the issue, it doesn’t avoid it.
    • Don’t let academia rule the waves.  I grazed over this issue from a Roman Catholic perspective in my review of Christ Among Us.  Their idea was that seminary academics would work to redefine the doctrines of the church.  Needless to say, that got a smackdown under Pope John Paul II, much to the relief of the #straightouttairondale crowd.  I’ve seen the same idea unspoken (usually, sometimes verbalised) by many Pentecostal seminary academics, and some of these are in turn in the SPS.  But that’s not the job of the academy, and that comes from a PhD holding academic.  The primary job of the academy is to train our future ministers to be effective preachers and stewards of the Gospel.  Irrespective of the serious authority issues in Pentecostal churches, there is no Biblical sanction for moving that to the academy.
    • Don’t let academia waive the rules, either.  One lesson from the Episcopal Church’s experience that bears repeating is that their drift from orthodox Christianity began in their seminaries with the introduction of “higher criticism” and other new ideas that undermined the faith of the church.  By the time of the critical moment in the 1960’s, the church folded when confronted with the likes of James Pike.  That process is much slower in Pentecostal churches because, overall, the educational level of our ministers is lower than that in Anglicanism (as is the case with the laity, that’s the preferential option of the poor in action.)  But it’s something that need not be ignored.
    • Don’t be an institutionalist.  This cuts both ways.  One of the perennial frustrations I have with the ACNA is its fixation on being in communion with Canterbury.  The recent Church of England synod should put paid to that obsession, but I wouldn’t count on it.  They have the chance to both make a gain for orthodoxy and to break a racist-colonialist structure by making GAFCON the “real Anglican Communion,” but they can’t bring themselves to do it.  OTOH, it is silly (and dangerous in the current circumstance) for people to insist that the institutions they work for accept their idea just because they have it and it looks trendy.  As I noted in this piece, it’s their institution, not yours; deal with it.

    I hate to see this issue come to haunt Pentecostal churches, but I guess in my gut I felt it would sooner or later.  As I said before:

    Before he went to trial, suffering, crucifixion and death, Our Lord exhorted his disciples in this way: “I have spoken to you in this way, so that in me you may find peace. In the world you will find trouble; yet, take courage! I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33 TCNT)  That has not changed.  Neither should our response.

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  • The Creation of Men and Angels: Last singularity of the creation of man in his immortality

    This is one in a series from Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries. The previous post is here. More information on the Bossuet Project is here.

    We no longer count the admirable singularities of the creation of man, so great are the number. But the last is immortality. O God, what a marvel! All the animals I see beyond me are subject to death; I alone, with a body composed of the same elements, I am immortal by my origin.

    I could die, however, since I could sin; I have sinned, and I am dead; But I could not die, because I could not sin, and it was sin alone that deprived me of the use of the tree of life.

    What happiness! What perfection of man! Made in the image of God by a particular design of his wisdom, established in a paradise, in a delightful garden, where all the goods abounded, under a sky always pure and always benign. In the midst of the rich waters of four rivers, without having to fear death, free, happy, tranquil, without any deformity or infirmity, either on the side of the mind or on the side of the body, without any need of clothes, with pure and innocent nakedness, having my salvation and my happiness in my hand. The heaven opens before me, to be transported there when God wished, without passing through the dreadful shadows of death! Cry endlessly miserable man, who has lost all his possessions, and console yourself only in Jesus Christ, who has restored them to you, and yet in greater abundance.

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  • Is It Necessary for a Roman Catholic to Agree With Everything the Church Teaches?

    One thing that comes up for those of us who “swim the Tiber” is the idea that anyone who becomes a Roman Catholic must agree with “everything” that the Church teaches.  This issue came up when Greg Griffith stunned the Anglican blogosphere with his conversion.   “Does he really agree with all that?” people asked.

    The answer to that question is, like so many things in Roman Catholicism, complicated, and it depends upon whom you ask.  That, in turn, depends upon the relative stance of the person you’re talking to with the real teaching of the church.  For many years those with a leftward drift tended to discount that kind of fidelity, while those on the other side (like the #straightouttairondale crowd) enthusiastically proclaim it.

    A more thoughtful treatment comes from the conservative side of the church with this post, formally entitled Quaeritur: What is the Status of a Catholic Who Dissents from the Magisterium? It comes from the Ite ad Thomam blog, maintained by one Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, Ph.D.  I hasten to add that my church counts several Carrasquillos (also Puerto Rican) as members; they have not done much for the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, but they have brought honour to the family name, as they are fine Christian people.

    He starts to answer this question as follows:

    It depends on the level of the Magisterial teaching in question. Some teachings have been defined dogmatically, for example, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and many, many others; such that believing in these teachings is part of the definition of what it means to be Catholic. And if someone obstinately denies even the least of these, then they no longer meet the requirements for the definition of what it means to be Catholic. There is no such thing as a Catholic who denies the divinity of Christ—or for that matter a Catholic who denies that the sacramental accidents of the Eucharist continue to exist without a subject in which to inhere.

    This is reasonable.  Most conservative Christians would say that there is a core of belief which is essential to being a Christian.  Where differences arise is in what makes up that core, although again there is a great deal of overlap between what the RCC says is the core and what others do.

    Dr. Romero also addresses the issue of whether people who do not are really Catholic; he says they are not.  That goes against the idea of some who believe that Roman Catholicism is like flypaper; once it gets on you, you are stuck with it.  On one level that makes sense, but it has always struck me as duplicitous that people loudly proclaim to be X while believing things that are flatly contradictory to that proclamation.

    But then he goes on as follows:

    On the other hand, if someone denies a teaching that is not dogmatically defined, or especially one that is not directly part of the Deposit of Faith, but is simply a theological conclusion or common teaching of the ordinary Magisterium, then this would be different. You wouldn’t cease being Catholic by denying it.

    I’m speaking, for example, of the case of a Catholic who for some reason would deny that Our Lady is the Mediatrix of all Graces—a doctrine that hasn’t yet been defined. The same is true of teachings that are logically or theologically derived from defined dogma, but which are themselves not defined.

    Many non-Catholics have the idea that being a Roman Catholic is to throw away the brains and accept the teachings of the church without question.  That’s simply not the case, if for no other reason than the breadth and complexity of the teaching and the intellectual and historical development behind it is far beyond just about anything else in Christianity. It’s true that many Catholics have never investigated that breadth, and it’s also true that the state of things in most parishes doesn’t encourage that kind of inquiry (which is one reason the RCC bleeds members the way it does.)  But it is true that there is a fairly extensive body of belief which the Church has not definitively pronounced on, and in these cases there is room for variance, although Dr. Romero points out that you may be a “bad Catholic” for doing so.

    An interesting example comes from Dr. Romero himself: the idea that Our Lady is the Mediatrix of all Graces.  It’s safe to say that the #straightouttairondale bunch would proclaim that to be essentially Catholic, but Dr. Romero points out that this has not been raised to dogma by the Church.  There are many problems with making that step, not the least of which is that it would make a purely created being the conduit of uncreated grace, something that is avoided in Jesus Christ because he is both God and man united, and thus with an uncreated, divine nature.

    So the simple answer to this question is “no.”  It depends upon the level a certain dogma holds in the magisterium.  Whether that satisfies Protestant concerns is another matter altogether.  But we cannot have a discussion on the issue unless we understand where everyone is at, and this should clear up an important point.

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  • The Creation of Men and Angels: On the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and on the tree of life

    One can understand that God had produced from the earth every tree beautiful to see and agreeable to taste; And in the midst of paradise he also set the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God could annex to plants certain natural virtues in relation to our bodies. And it is easy to believe that the fruit of the tree of life had the virtue of repairing the body by a food so proportioned and so effective that it would never die by using it. But for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as this was an effect which passed the natural virtue of a tree, it might be said that this tree was so called by the event, because Man, by using this tree against the command of God, has learned the unfortunate knowledge which makes him discern from experience the evil which his infidelity attracted to him from the good in which he had been created. Only if he had persevered in innocence.

    It may also be thought that the virtue of giving man the knowledge of good and evil was in this tree a supernatural virtue like that which God placed in the sacraments; as in the water, the power of regenerating the interior of man, and spreading life and grace there.

    Be that as it may, without inquiring curiously the secret of the work of God, it is sufficient for me to know that God had absolutely forbidden from the beginning the use of the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil, and not the use of the tree of life. His words are: Eat the fruit of all the trees of paradise, but do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Only that fruit was forbidden, and that of the tree of life was only after sin, according to this saying: Let us take care that he does not put his hand again on the tree of life, and that he live eternally.

    O God! I submit to your prohibition: I renounce all curious knowledge, since you forbid me to use it; I ought to know by experience only good; I was too ill to find out what you did not want to teach me, and I am satisfied with the knowledge you want to give me. For the tree of life you allowed me to use it, and I could be immortal with this help, and now you give it to me by the cross of my Savior. The true fruit of life hangs on this mysterious tree and I eat it in the Eucharist from the cross, celebrating this mystery according to the precept of Jesus Christ, in memory of his death, in accordance with this saying: Do this in memory of me, and this of St. Paul: Whenever ye eat of this heavenly bread, and drink of this holy cup, you shall proclaim, and proclaim, and celebrate the death of the Lord. It is here therefore a fruit of death and a fruit of life; A fruit of life, since Jesus Christ said, “Your fathers have eaten the manna, and they are dead; But whoever eats of the bread I give you will never die.” The Eucharist is therefore a fruit and a bread of life. But, at the same time, it is a death-fruit, since it was necessary, in order to vivify us, that Jesus should taste death for us all, and that, recalled to life by this death, we should continually carry in our bodies the mortification of Jesus, by the death of our passions, and by dying to ourselves and to our own desires, to live only to him who died and rose again for us. Let us weigh these words and live with Jesus Christ, as he was mortified according to the flesh, and vivified according to the spirit, as St. Peter said.

  • The Creation of Men and Angels: God gives man a commandment and warns him of his free will and all of his subjection

    This is one in a series from Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries. The previous post is here. More information on the Bossuet Project is here.

    You will eat of all the fruits of heaven, but you will not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day you eat thereof you shall die of death. (Gen. 2:16, 17) Death will be inevitable for you. Eve was present at this commandment, although in anticipation it was reported before her production, or, at any rate, it was repeated in her presence, since she said to the serpent: The Lord has commanded us not to eat this fruit. Perhaps one would like to believe that she learned from Adam the prohibition of God, and that from that time it pleased God to teach us that it is the duty of women to question, as St. Paul says, at home and, in particular, their husbands and to expect from them the orders of God.

    Be that as it may, God does two things by this commandment: he teaches man, first, his free will, and, secondly, his subjection.

    Free will is one of the places of man where the image of God appears most advantageously. God is free to do or do not do anything external that pleases him, because he needs nothing and is superior to all his work: let him make a hundred thousand worlds; he is no greater. That he should do none, he is none the less. Outside, nothingness or being is equal to him, and he is master, to do nothing or whatever he pleases. That the rational soul can also make of herself or of the body united to her what pleases her, is certainly an admirable feature and an admirable participation of the divine being. I am nothing, but because it pleased God to make me in his image, and to imprint in my being a resemblance, though feeble, of his free will, I want my hand to rise, my arm to spread, my head, my body turns; I cease to want it and I want everything to turn in another direction: it is the same. All this is indifferent to me; I am on one side as well as on another. And of all this there is no reason but my will: that is, because I will; And I will, because I will. And this is one last reason, because God willed to give me this faculty. And yet there is some reason for determining me to one rather than the other, if this reason is not pressing, and it is for me only a matter of convenience more or less great, I can easily give it to myself or not. And I can either give myself or take away great conveniences, and if I wish, inconveniences and pains so grand. And all this, because I want it; and God has subjected this to my will, and I can even use my liberty, even to procure for myself great sufferings, to expose me to death, to give it to me, so much I am master of myself by this trait of divine resemblance which is called free will. And if I return within myself, I can apply my intelligence to an infinity of different objects or to one rather than the other, and to all successively, starting with where I want to go. And I can cease to desire it, and even to want the contrary, and of an infinite number of acts of my will, I can do either this or that, without there being any other reason, except that I want it. Or if there is any other reason, I am the master of this reason to use it or not to use it, as I desire. And by this principle of free will I am capable of virtue and merit; And it is imputed to me for the good I do, and glory belongs to me.

    It is true that I can also turn away from evil, and my work is imputed to me. And I commit a sin of which I can either repent or not repent. And this repentance is a very different pain from others than I can suffer; For I may be sorry to have a fever, or be blind, but not repent of these evils when they come to me in spite of myself. But if I lie, if I am unjust or slandering, and I am sorry for it, this grief is repentance which I can have and have not: happy if I repent of evil, and that I voluntarily persevere in good.

    There is in my freedom a defective trait, which is to be able to do evil. This trait does not come from God, but it comes to me from the nothingness from which I am drawn. In this defect I degenerate from God who has made me, for God can not want evil, and the Psalmist sings to him: “You are a God who does not want iniquity.” My God, this is the fault and character of the creature. I am not a perfect image and likeness of God; I am only made in the image, I have some features of it, but by what I am, I do not have everything, and I have been turned towards a likeness. But I am not a likeness, since I can sin at last. I fall into the defect in a thousand places: by imperfection, by multiplicity, by the variability of my actions. All this is not in God, and I degenerate through all these places. But the place where I degenerate the most, the weakness, and, so to speak, the shame of my nature, is that I can sin.

    God in the beginning gave me a precept, for it was just that I felt that I was a subject. I am a creature to whom it is proper to be subdued. I was born free, God willed it, but my freedom is not an independence: it was necessary to have a subject liberty, or if you prefer to speak thus with a Father, a free servitude under a sovereign Lord: libera servitus. And that is why I needed a precept to make me feel that I had a master. O God, the easy precept that you first gave me! Among so many trees and fruits, was it so difficult to abstain from one? But you only wanted to make me feel, by an easy yoke and with a light hand, that I was under your dominion. O God, after having shaken the yoke, it is only right that I should undergo the work, penance, and death which you have imposed upon me. O God! You are my King; do me what you will with your justice; But do not forget your mercies.

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