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God’s Answer to Overthinking–The Christian Tech-Nerd
If there’s one thing that frequently drives me crazy in my teaching engineering students, it’s their tendency to overthink problems and get lost in the process. This is good advice.
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Lent 2024 Series: I Am the Bread of Life: How Do We Celebrate the Eucharist?
The previous video in this series (there are only two) is found at the link Lent 2024 Series: I Am The Bread of Life: What Is the Eucharist? In posting this originally I neglected to included the video; my apologies for any inconvenience.
The second in two sessions on this topic. In this video we explore the proper celebration on the Eucharist, including whether it needs to be liturgical or not, and a review of the liturgy of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which is a traditional Anglican liturgy.
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Lent 2024 Series: I Am The Bread of Life: What Is the Eucharist?
A series for Lent 2024 in two parts:
- What is the Eucharist? (this video)
- How Do We Celebrate the Eucharist? (next video)
Eucharistic theology and practice have long been a favourite topic of mine, from posts like Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology: It Depends on What ‘Is’ Is to Don’t Tell People to “Come to the Table” Unless They Really Do–Or Should to Intiction: “I Don’t Think You Can Do That”. This puts some of that together–with new material–in a two-part video series.
It was my original intention to do this live at my church, the North Cleveland Church of God, but after the difficulties I ran into in putting on the last series, I decided to do this virtually. Feel free to leave your comments either here or on the YouTube videos themselves.
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The Issues of the Role of the Laity and WO are Really Tied Together
I recently replied to Chris Findley’s article with the post The Inconvenient Truth About the Nature of the Priesthood. One of the respondents to this pointed out a statement from the ACNA bishops as follows:
As a College of Bishops, we confess that our Province has failed to affirm adequately the ministry of all Christians as the basic agents of the work of the Gospel. We have not effectively discipled and equipped all Christians, male and especially female, lay and ordained, to fulfill their callings and ministries in the work of God’s kingdom. We repent of this and commit to work earnestly toward a far greater release of the whole Church to her God-given mission.
As someone who worked in lay ministries at a denominational level for more than a decade, I have pointed out that the issue of WO and that of empowering, equipping and sending the laity forth to due the work of the Gospel as God intended them to are tied together. Many people who advocate for WO shy away from making this connection because they implicitly fear that advancing lay ministries of all kinds will dilute the urgency of WO. But that doesn’t change the reality: a church that throttles the laity will, sooner rather than later, have to deal with all of those who conclude that they can never fulfil God’s plan for them as a lay person.
The concept of the priesthood that Findley set forth and which excludes women from that vocation also does the same thing for the laity. The inert laity of Roman Catholicism was supposed to be activated with Vatican II, but that too is an unfulfilled promise. The ACNA and other Anglican bodies have learned little from this experience. But, in all fairness, personal experience tells me that it doesn’t take such a theory to effectively sideline lay involvement in the way envisioned by the New Testament. It is the great failure of contemporary Christianity, and sooner or later we will all have to deal with its consequences.
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The “Leaky” Church of God Marches On
With all the recent excitement over Calvin Robinson and WO, something has come to my attention: the existence of another Church of God related site that has been using my material. Back in the day (2000-2010) we could speak of an “Anglican Blogosphere” which was instrumental in forming the ACNA. The Church of God was a little late to the party but in the last years of the decade we had the “Missional Movement” which resulted in the “tithe on tithe” cuts that ended my career in the International Offices. We also had sites like Actscelerate, which contributed greatly to that event as well.
Since then most of our “voices” have migrated to social media, something which I’ve always been wary of since once you put something on social media it’s really theirs to copy and/or dispose of. But there are a few holdouts (like this one) in the open internet. In the past I’ve noted ourCOG, which not only has used my material but also had posted things that I’ve commented on. This post, with its strange title, is indicative of this place: cogleaks. So just what are these people leaking?
Let me state at the outset that the Church of God isn’t the most transparent organisation I’ve ever been associated with. It is centralised in a way that rivals Roman Catholicism, and has a long heritage of pastors being the “boss man” of their churches. (Their members, many of which worked in the mills, mines and factories that were a part of our once-great industrial base, were to a point congenial to that kind of hierarchy.) That ethic works up the “food chain” through the state offices to the International Office and the Executive Committee. The result of this is twofold. The first is that it engenders distrust between the “layers” of the system, something that was documented twenty years ago in the “Bowers Report,” and that distrust certainly hindered the efforts of my department–Lay Ministries–to disseminate and promote men’s ministries and personal evangelism. The second is that it encourages, intentionally or not, holding back information about the business of the church. Hence, anything that comes out is assumed to have been “leaked,” whether that be a fair characterisation or not.
It is in that context that we need to understand sites such as ourCOG and now cogleaks. The latter first posted in 2007, so it’s been out there for a long time. Most of the time it takes material from other places and reposts it. This site has been a source for a long time; the first “repost” from this site was in 2016. Many of the posts are without attribution of any kind, which (as I also pointed out to ourCOG) is a violation of the Terms and Conditions of this Website, Privacy Policy and Information About Endorsements. Nevertheless it tells me that this site has some admirers out there; considering the Church of God has never been the central focus of this site, that’s gratifying.
So what kind of site is cogleaks? Like this one and our COG, it’s a WordPress blog. It’s theme is like nothing else I’ve seen; it has a black background with green, fixed-pitch font Letter Gothic typeset. I think that’s supposed to mean that it comes from a very “dark web” type of source, but for someone who actually got work done with that kind of screen in front of him, in its own way it’s very cool and retro. The downside is that it’s hard to find anything on the site; there is no search box, no category list, no timeline list, nothing. I suppose that the author figures people will find this site via the search engines, but my experience here is that search engines are an on again, off again proposition. The articles come from a wide variety of sources and cover a wide variety of topics, most of which centre on our church’s hierarchy.
So who is behind this long-term effort? The posts themselves drop a few bread crumbs, and even though the site is technically anonymous there are two things which point to a possible author, or at least to where he or she comes from. The first is that many of the posts concern things in South Florida, so I’m thinking the person behind cogleaks is a South Floridian. That’s congenial for me because I’m one too and so is Travis Johnson, a major mover behind the “Missional Revolt” and currently embroiled in a dispute with a Lee University faculty member (who has brought charges of conduct unbecoming of a minister against him.) South Floridians are a unique bunch; whether it’s Glenn Greenwald or Travis or the webmaster of cogleaks or myself, we’re not much on “playing up” to the leadership.
The second thing can be seen in many of the posts on cogleaks but for me one thing stands out: the reposting of my 2015 piece What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race. I’ve reposted this on social media (and elsewhere) many times and the universal response from our church people is…crickets. The Scots-Irish “core” of this church–left, right and centre–doesn’t really want to deal with the issues I bring up in this post. This and other things lead me to believe that the person behind cogleaks is outside of this “core,” which would be a refreshing addition to our church’s conversation.
If there’s one thing that bothers me about cogleaks, it’s the “axe-grinding” I read on the site. That’s not unique to cogleaks, but I’ve tried to avoid that in my years online. Some would say that cogleaks’ anonymity makes that possible, but I’ve seen plenty of that with people who are quite open about who they are and were they’ve been. Generally speaking it’s indicative of a lack of due process (perceived or actual) in whatever system they’ve found themselves in, be that the Church of God, Catholic Charismatic covenant communities, or what not. A more open, transparent system would mute a great deal of that.
This year is going to be a crucial one for our church. We have three Executive Committee positions open and of course our ministers can certainly not nominate the other two. The last General Assembly saw a great deal of online organisation which drove our discussions. We have the shadowy “Atlanta Group” with their idea of who should run the church and how it should be done. (Declaration to same group: if you’re a successor to the “Think Younger” movement of the last decade, you need to take heed to what I told them back then in my post My Response to “Think Younger” and the Church of God General Assembly.) We are in a culture whose lurch to the left is not leaving us unaffected. Traditionally the doctrinal and practical homogeneity of our church has made many of our clashes personal disputes played out on a grand stage, but the possibility of the substantive issues being thrown in with personality clashes isn’t an encouraging one.
Our church needs “voices” who love our church (I do, but sometimes it drives me crazy) and who want to advance the mission that God put it on the earth to fulfil. Let us move forward to speak the truth in love, not just as an expression but as a reality. I welcome cogleaks as another one of those and hope to interact on a fruitful basis.
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The Inconvenient Truth About the Nature of the Priesthood
Chris Findley goes at it again in his opposition to women in the “priesthood”:
There are few topics in the church today that are bound to stir up more impassioned arguments than that of women and the priesthood. Undoubtedly there are good people on both sides of this debate. Surely, there is a love for Jesus and his church among those who both call for acceptance of this practice and those who call for rejection of the same. Sometimes these debates become heated and insulting and that is to our shame.
What should be at the center of any debate on the matter, particularly based on the Anglican’s own formularies, must be Scripture. Second to this, careful consideration must be given to the saints who have gone before us, that “great cloud of witnesses” who have cared for the church in past generations. Everything else, including our feelings or social convention must give way to the Bible itself and its historical exegetical practice.
I’ve dealt with this topic before. Before we even get to WO, the first thing we need to deal with is the nature of the priesthood itself, which Findley assumes more than he explains. I dealt with both almost five years ago in my post The Problem Overlooked in the McGowin-Nelson-Johnson Debate Over Women’s Ordination, from which the following is taken:
…at the risk of oversimplification, Nelson and Johnson state that, since Christ was male, it is necessary for a male to represent him at the altar, thus women cannot do this task. This is familiar to any one who has moved in the Roman Catholic world. The problem with this is that it presupposes an unbiblical ecclesiology. It requires that the celebrant, as a priest, represent Christ at the altar, and thus be empowered to effect the transformation of the elements as Our Lord did at the Last Supper and Paul enjoined us to continue in the Eucharist. That in turn leads to the whole concept of the Mass as a present sacrifice, which I deal with elsewhere.
At the risk of being repetitious and otiose, let me remind my readers of the following:
Again, new Levitical priests are continually being appointed, because death prevents their remaining in office; but Jesus remains for all time, and therefore the priesthood that he holds is never liable to pass to another. And that is why he is able to save perfectly those who come to God through him, living for ever, as he does, to intercede of their behalf. This was the High Priest that we needed–holy, innocent, spotless, withdrawn from sinners, exalted above the highest Heaven, one who has no need to offer sacrifices daily as those High Priests have, first for their own sins, and then for those of the People. For this he did once and for all, when he offered himself as the sacrifice. The Law appoints as High Priests men who are liable to infirmity, but the words of God’s oath, which was later than the Law, name the Son as, for all time, the perfect Priest. (Hebrews 7:23-28 TCNT)
We don’t need a priest representing God any more. We have one perfect priest, Jesus Christ. We may appoint someone to represent us before him when we gather together, but Our Lord needs neither representative nor substitute. I’ve debated this subject in the past and you can read that here and here.
Once that is posited, Nelson’s and Johnson’s case collapses. That doesn’t entirely solve the issue, and it brings another one to light: the whole nature of the church. When the ACNA was started I noted that there were two major issues of division that remained unresolved: WO (this one) and the Reformed-Anglo-Catholic divide. The two are related; McGowin actually touches on this issue in her response but doesn’t really pursue it. In American feminism the custom is to superimpose postmodern ideas of equality on existing structures without considering the merits of those structures to start with, and the result is cognitive dissonance. The same problem applies to same-sex civil marriage: it never occurred to anyone to debate whether civil marriage was working for heterosexuals before extending the franchise to same-sex couples.
It is ironic that Findley quotes Hebrews, where the true nature of the priesthood under Christ is discussed. But, since we live down the road from each other, we can discuss this issue more thoroughly if he likes.
Another note: my title is taken from another Tennessean, Al Gore. The thing that Al Gore and others have never done is to really solve the problems he set forth, and the thing that should have been done a quarter century ago is to re-initiate the broad-based implementation of carbon-free nuclear power. But these days we are better at lamenting at our sad state or ginning up movements than we are at solving our problems.
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Losing Seasons — Northern Plains Anglican
My sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, 2024. Delivered at Church of the Resurrection, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Lectionary Year B I …
Losing Seasons -
Calvin Robinson Hasn’t Quite Closed the Loop on Authority and WO
By now I am sure that most people reading this are aware of the controversy surrounding Fr. Calvin Robinson’s dismissal from the Mere Anglicanism conference after criticizing women’s ordination in his talk. Of course, I agree entirely with what Fr. Robinson said about that practice, and was pleased to find him make many of the same arguments I made in my own article against it.
But he also attacks the Reformation as well:
However, while I agree with Robinson’s opposition to women’s ordination and critical theory, they were not the only things he criticized in his talk. Robinson also spent some time arguing that liberalism and aspects of Marxism stem from the Protestant Reformation, a movement he has previously claimed was “a mistake.”
What many fail to realise is that, if we reject WO, rejecting the Reformation isn’t as easy as it looks. While Robinson understand this, he needs to take further measures to be consistent.
Let’s start with the whole business of authority. I did a piece entitled Authority and Evangelical Churches and I will pull some quotes therefrom:
So where do Evangelical churches fit into this? The honest truth is that every Evangelical church–without exception–is the result of an act of rebellion from constituted ecclesiastical authority. That trend started with Protestant churches in general, although most of these complicated the issue by their alliance with the state. But look where it went from there. The Methodists seceded from the Anglicans, the holiness and Pentecostal churches in their turn seceded from the Methodists, and the Baptists simply seceded from everybody including themselves. The multitude of denominations is a testament of one secession from another, of one rebellion against existing authority after another. As noted in Taming the Rowdies, in the US the rebel churches not only succeeded in rebelling against constituted secular authority (the British) but then turned around and, with the connivance of the Freemasons, managed to get the established churches booted out of their places in all of the colonies!…
The day I come to the conclusion that submission to a human authority structure is the ne plus ultra of the Christian life is the day I return to Roman Catholicism, because the Roman Catholic Church is the only Christian church with a consistent theory (if not always practice) of authority.
So, if continuity of authority is what you’re looking for (and it’s obviously a big deal with Fr. Robinson,) then the Reformation was a mistake. We need to look elsewhere for reasons to justify it.
Now let’s turn to my piece Women in Ministry and Authority in Churches: A Response to the Ugley Vicar, which was my response to John Richardson (of blessed memory) on this topic. Richardson, who opposed WO, nevertheless brought up John Goldingay’s “Authority A and Authority B” paradigm. I’ll reproduce Richardson’s summary of Goldingay:
In it, he identified two kinds of authority. Authority A is the institutional kind possessed by the centurion, who said to one man “‘Go’ and he goes, to another ‘Come’ and he comes.” Authority B, he said, is the kind possessed by Jesus who, “spoke with authority because he was in touch with God and with truth” (8).
Goldingay then went on to consider the implications for the church’s ministry, with the following observation:
… in the church it is the position of elder-presbyter-priest/bishop that has become, as it developed clearly into two offices, the most important locus of Authority A in the church. (22)
Goldingay’s distinction may be criticized in the details of presentation (did Jesus not possess an ‘Authority A’, precisely as recognize by the centurion?), but it is helpful in considering the nature of authority itself, particularly as it applies to the ordained ministry. For what many members of the Church of England do not realize is just how much the authority of their ‘hierarchy’ is an Authority A, not B.
I would invite my readers who are interested in this topic to peruse the whole post, but a summary of what I got out of the dialogue and subsequent reflection is as follows:
- Authority “A” is a part of any organisation, and doesn’t necessarily imply spiritual supremacy of those who hold it, which is a key point to what follows.
- Authority “B” can come in one of two forms. One is Roman Catholicism’s magisterium, where the church can both pronounce on matters of life and eternity and make them stick to the faithful (even when they have dicey Scriptural backing.) This authority extends to its priests, who are both dispensers of the sacraments (grace) and take the place of Christ at a sacrificing altar. The other is what you see in modern Pentecost where the church is under the straight direction of the Holy Spirit, who raises up charismatic leaders (I’m thinking about the pattern shown in Judges, not the self-validating stuff we see now) to guide the Body of Christ.
- Authority “B” was necessary when the canon of the New Testament was non-existent, being written or being finalised. The need for it subsequent to that is doubtful. This is the springboard for the whole Reformation, although Protestant churches routinely claim things that smack of Authority “B”.
- Anglicanism’s place in all of this is complicated, and depends upon how you view the English Reformation. I tend to the more “Protestant” view, which accentuates the separation between Rome and Canterbury.
- In any case dispensing with Authority “B” in churches pulls the rug out of the key argument against WO: that it puts women in authority, and specifically spiritual authority, over men. Once you deny that the church still has Authority “B” your main case against WO goes with it. (The flip side to that is that women cannot claim it either, something that feminists don’t want to admit. One of the things, however, that modern Pentecost has demonstrated is that you can have WO without feminism.)
- I think that the RCC’s claim of Authority “B”, while having promoted some very nice theological constructs, has overall had a deleterious effect by promoting things that are contrary to the character of our Founder.
Calvin Robinson needs to swim the Tiber if he wants to be consistent. Unfortunately this is the worst moment (in my lifetime at least) to do Tiber swimming, something I tried to set forth in Gavin Ashenden Swims the Tiber. But if he wants to be consistent about both of these issues, he (and others) don’t have very many nice choices these days.
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About Those “Loosey-Goosey” Communion Theologies, Episcopal and Otherwise
Here in the Church of God we’re in a explosive situation over one of our ministers criticising another minister/church institution employee over his receiving communion at his wife’s Episcopal church. There are many issues surrounding this, but as someone who has been in both churches in my lifetime, there’s one thing that I’d like to focus on: the whole business of who gets to receive communion in both of these “traditions” (I’m not fond of that terminology, but I haven’t come up with a better one.)
Let’s start with the Episcopalians. The Protestant Episcopal Church I grew up in had what is normally termed a “closed” communion. It was restricted to those who had been confirmed in the Episcopal Church, which is one reason why I was confirmed at the appointed time. Since then things have gotten “loosier and goosier” (to borrow a term from the pile driving industry) and now confirmation is no longer a prerequisite to receive communion. We’ve heard about those who would admit the unbaptised to Holy Communion, and I’m sure this happens.
The Episcopalians, however, are not alone in loosiness or goosiness. I’ve been in the Church of God for two score now and have never heard anything about baptism (water or the Holy Spirit) being a prerequisite for taking communion. There is nothing in the teachings of the church; the only requirement is that the person doing so be a believer. (And baptism isn’t even a necessity for joining the church!)
Going back to the days of wine (along with harder stuff) and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, before every communion we were told to admit our sins to God as their burden had become intolerable. After that, of course, we recited the Comfortable Words, which were very much that for me. Since that dreadful 1979 BCP was instituted, that confession has become softer (they should consider just reciting Jimmy Buffett.) One again the Church of God rises to the occasion. Since we have no regular rite for the Holy Communion, there is no necessity for any kind of proclamation for self-examination, that part is sometimes left out, which is a pity (see also 1 Cor. 11:28-30.)
So what are the takeaways from this? I have a few:
- The Church of God needs to define a few things about the Holy Communion, as it was instituted in the Last Supper along with foot washing. A regular rite wouldn’t hurt either; since we are in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and John Wesley didn’t have any problem with having a prayer book, we shouldn’t find it offensive. Leaving behind Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology: It Depends on What ‘Is’ Is would also be helpful, although that’s not explicitly written into our teachings either.
- Personally I won’t receive communion in either an Episcopal church, an ACNA or a Continuing church (to say nothing of an RCC church, which has its own additional problems these days.) That’s because I have not been formally received (back) into any of these.
- The minister who complained about receiving Communion in the Episcopal Church did so because this church is a “gay-friendly church.” While I’m sure some Episcopalians would try to dodge this characterisation, during the last quarter century and more the actions of its prelates and the General Convention say otherwise.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 