A Thinking Reed

Category: Anglicanism

  • For Reformation Sunday: “Private judgment” as guardian of consciences

    Readers may know that Lutherans and some other Protestants commemorate October 31 as “Reformation Day,” since it’s the date of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses in Wittenberg. As has happened with a lot of other church feasts and commemorations, this tends to get moved to the nearest Sunday, which falls this year on the Sunday coming up.

    One of the most controverted aspects of the Reformation heritage, historically and today, has been the notion of “private judgment.” The idea -stemming from increased access to the Bible due to more vernacular translations, greater literacy, and the printing press – is that each person has the right and duty to interpret the Bible for herself. Luther set the template for later Protestantism in delcaring that his conscience was captive to the Word of God and that he wouldn’t back down from his positions unless their falsity could be demonstrated by biblical exegesis or by reason.

    Understandably, Catholics have balked at this notion, seeing it as arrogantly elevating the individual above the witness and wisdom of the Church. It’s also been blamed for the splintering of Protestantism into countless churches, not a few of them claiming to be the “one true church” and anathematizing all others.

    What’s perhaps more surprising is that in recent times some Protestant theologians have turned on the idea of private judgment. Stanley Hauerwas, with his characteristic hyperbole, even suggested taking the Bible out the laity’s hands. The worry here is often that Protestantism has bred individualism in opposition to the communal judgment of the church. This is sometimes seen as resulting in captivity to foreign ideologies: without the witness of the church to guide interpretation and doctrine, we’re more likely to tailor our theology to the prevailing cultural or political winds as the “German Christians” did under Hitler and as conservative evangelicals in the U.S. are accused of doing today.

    This critique of private judgment seems also to be the outworking of a particular view of rationality and selfhood. Recent philosophy is much more likely than its Enligtenment predecessor to view the self as the product of social, linguistic and cultural influences and not as a rational agent capable of attaining a “god’s eye view” in order to make judgments of truth and falsehood. Theologians have run with this idea in order to situate biblical interpretation and theology firmly within the church community and its judgments.

    However, without denying that the Enlightenment view of a universal, context-free rationality is problematic or getting into inter-communion polemics, I think there are still good reasons for upholding something like the traditional Protestant view in the face of objections from neo-traditionalist detractors. I think this is most helpfully seen if we look at the notion of private judgment as a means of protecting the conscience of the individual.

    The principle of private judgment depends crucially on two bedrock Reformation assumptions: the sufficiency of scripture and the fallibility of the church. Scripture is sufficient, for the Reformers, in that it “containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation” (Article VI of the Anglican Articles of Religion). Likewise the church, according to the Reformers, has erred in certain respects, which rules out any form of infallibility.

    Taken together, these two principles forbid requiring anyone to believe something merely on the church’s say-so and without demonstrating it from Scripture. What this does is to create a “zone of protection” around the individual’s conscience. The Reformers were convinced that even simple laypeople could discern the main thrust of the gospel from reading Scripture and from the preaching and worship of the church, and that nothing beyond the gospel was necessary for salvation.

    In his theological defense of political liberalism, Christopher Insole argues that, far from presupposing atomistic self-created individuals, liberalism rightly understood takes full cognizance of the fragility of human selves. This is because it protects individuals from the excessive certainties of others. The Protestant conception of private judgment does something analogous in the ecclesiastical sphere: for the sake of conscience judgments on what is inherently uncertain shouldn’t be enforced. Though in practice Protestants often violated this principle, it’s pretty much built in to their understanding of faith. Faith in Christ alone is sufficient for being a Christian.

    None of this means that Protestants have to forego the accumulated wisdom of the church. The Reformers were happy to appeal to the Fathers especially, and the magisterial Reformers accepted the ecumenical creeds as summaries of the gospel. Nor does it mean an individual believer has a “private religion”: in many (even most) cases the traditional understanding of the mysteries of the faith are vastly superior to anything he could come up with on his own. And there is a built in limit to the fissiparousness of Protestantism in that the witness to God revealed in Jesus as recounted in the NT provides the touchstone for its religious life. To step outside of that is to cease to be Protestant (or Christian) in any meaningful sense.

  • Transcript of Rowan Williams talk on the new atheism

    If you’re interested but don’t want to sit through the video of Rowan Williams’ talk on Dawkins and the new atheism that I linked to last week, you can read a transcript here.

  • ABC on abortion

    Also via Thinking Anglicans, Rowan Williams writes about abortion in Britain and the “slippage” from a presumption of extending protection of fetal life with exceptions for extraordinary circumstances, to a presumption of liberty of choice with respect to abortion. It seems to me that the U.S. is, if anything, more locked into the language of competing rights that Williams cautions us about here.

  • Anglicanism, protestantism and “denominational families”

    Interesting piece by Alister McGrath in the (Anglican) Church of Ireland Gazzette. He argues that Anglicanism is, historically and theologically, Protestant and that the concept of “denominational families” – the kind of loose federations that characterize world Lutheranism and Methodism, for example – could provide a fruitful model for the future of the Anglican Communion. And he sounds surprisingly upbeat about the prospect.

    (via Thinking Anglicans)

  • +Rowan on Dawkins, et al.

    See here for a streaming video of a recent lecture by Rowan Williams on the “new atheism.” Mad props to Richard at Connexions who was present.

  • Out in Africa

    Philip Jenkins, who arguably knows as much about Christianity in the global south as any “Northerner,” has an article on the African churches’ controversies over homosexuality at the New Republic (may require subscription to read).

    Jenkins argues that it’s misleading to see the intensity of the conflict over this as merely an extension of debates that have taken place in the West. Traditional denominations in Africa living in a context of competition with upstart Pentecostalism and with Islam have a strong incentive to toe a morally conservative line. Jenkins recounts a story from the late 19th century where Christian courtiers rejected the pederastic advances of the king of Buganda, who had come under the influence of Arab slave-trades, and were martyred for it:

    That foundation story remains well-known in the region, and it intertwines Christianity with resistance to tyranny and Muslim imperialism–both symbolized by sexual deviance. Reinforcing such memories are more recent experiences with Muslim tyrants, such as Idi Amin, whose victims included the head of his country’s Anglican Church. For many Africans, then, sexual unorthodoxy has implications that are at once un-Christian, anti-national, and oppressive.

    The conservative stance can also be a way of burnishing African Christians’ anti-Western and anti-colonialist credentials, “making clear to their own members and their Muslim neighbors that they are not puppets of the West. Moral conservatism thus serves to assert cultural independence–a link that requires sexual immorality to be portrayed as a Euro-American import.”

    Of course, that doesn’t make it the right position, and Jenkins is quick to point out that there are more liberal elements on the continent, particularly in South Africa, where the ANC is not likely to be seen as toadying to the West. There is a plurality of voices there, not to mention in the rest of the Global South, and it is by no means confined to places like South Africa (“arguably one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world.”):

    But South Africa is not the only place where gay-rights movements have gained a foothold. An Anglican group called Changing Attitude claims supporters in both Nigeria and Uganda, and the director of its Nigerian chapter, Davis Mac-Iyalla, has earned some notoriety as a liberal foil to Akinola. Some years ago, when Namibia’s then- president declared homosexuality a “behavioral disorder which is alien to African culture,” activists responded by creating a fairly overt gay-rights movement, the Rainbow Project.

    Jenkins’ conclusion is that Westerners should resist the temptation of seeing the African churches’ positions through the lens of our own controversies. Just as liberals have sometimes been prone to romanticize the “Third World,” conservatives have of late tended to see Africa as a bastion of “traditional values” holding out against the decadent West. But Jenkins advises caution: “gays in Africa face very real barriers to acceptance. And we do them no favors by viewing Africa’s culture war over homosexuality as a mere extension of the battle we are witnessing here in the United States, rather than as a fight which raises questions unique to African history and politics.”

    One might criticize Jenkins here for lapsing into a kind of moral relativism. He does tend to talk as though the churches in many parts Africa simply have no choice but to go along with the anti-gay line. This would presumably be of small comfort to gay people on the receiving end of some of the more punitive policies supported by some African churchmen. Still, I think it’s helpful to see both the plurality and the particularity of the situation, rather than as another manifestation of some kind of global “culture war.”

    UPDATE: Here’s a transcript (via The Topmost Apple) of a presentation by Jenkins on this topic with questions from a bunch of journalistic big-shots (Ken Woodward, E.J. Dionne, Jon Wilson of Books & Culture, etc.); a lot of fascinating discussion ensues.

  • Three approaches to faith and works

    In continuing the tradition of outsourcing quality theological reflection to my betters, allow me to link to this weighty post from Christopher on justification, sanctification and the various kinds of legalisms and antinomianisms that afflict the left and right.

    The way I’ve learned to think about faith and works was that we are saved – i.e. restored to a right relationship with God – sheely by grace on account of Christ received through faith. This is the Reformation view shared by Lutherans, Calvinists, and many Anglicans.

    But there’s a divergence about what role sanctification, or growth in the Christian life, means. Lutherans tend to say (at least when they’re being good Lutherans) that being continually rooted and re-rooted in faith will “naturally” produce good works (cf. Luther’s Freedom of a Christian). However, Luther, being the realist that he was, also recognized that our sinful impulses aren’t going to disappear until the consummation of all things, so in the interim we have the law to act as a check on them. I think this is properly described as the “civil” or first use of the law, not the much controverted third use.

    Calvinists, by contrast, tend to have a more positive view of the law as a guide to Christian living and see sanctification as on ongoing process of being empowered by grace to obey God’s law. Naturally as a Lutheran I think the danger here is legalism and instrospectiveness; Calvinists would no doubt say that Lutheranism courts antinomianism.

    An interesting third view, suggested as a distinctively Anglican one, is offered by Louis Weil in an essay called “The Gospel in Anglicanism,” found in an anthology The Study of Anglicanism, edited by Stephen Sykes and John Booty (1st ed.). Weil contends that Anglicanism, as it’s expressed in the prayer book and Articles of Religion, agrees with the Reformers on justification, but has a more sacramental understanding of sanctification:

    While clearly within the Reformation tradition in its understanding of justification, Anglicanism distanced itself from both Calvin and Luther in ways which have been presented here. It is particularly with regard to the role of the sacraments as instruments of grace that Anglicanism maintained its own middle way: as Hooker wrote, ‘Sacraments serve as the instruments of God.’ They are thus God’s actions toward mankind, occasions in which through participation in the outward forms, men and women are involved in an active response to the grace of God. (p. 71)

    In Weil’s view, the Anglican ethos sees sacramental and liturgical worship as the means by which God’s sanctifying grace is communicated to us. Through worship we participate in the mysteries of the faith and are linked to God’s purposes for the world. It is the primary means by which we are incorporated into the Body of Christ. Sanctification, then, has its roots in this incorporation; it is a key part of acquiring the “mind of Christ” from which good works flow. If good works are the fruit of faith, perhaps we can see this as “watering the plant.” This is one of the aspects of Anglicanism that I came to appreciate and cherish during last year’s sojourn among the Anglo-Catholics in Boston.

    In theory Lutherans (I can’t speak for our Calvinist/Reformed brethren) ought to have a similar sacramental piety. After all, Lutheranism was the “conservative” branch of the Reformation that maintained much of the Catholic practice that the more radical elements of the Reformation rejected outright. However, my sense among ELCA Lutherans at any rate is that this sense of participating sacramentally in the reality of the paschal mystery is not very common.

    My heart’s with the Lutherans in insisting that we can never merit our relationship with God. Our righteousness is always a gift that comes from outside (extra nos) and there’s nothing we can or need do to add to it. However, I also like the Anglican emphasis on being incorporated into Christ through participation in sacramental worship. Or, to put it more simply, learning to love Jesus by spending time with him. It seems to me that this offers the promise of helping to give a shape to the Christian life that sometimes seems to be lacking in Lutheranism, but without reducing it to sheer moralism.

  • Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway on the current Anglican unpleasantness

    I don’t typically comment on the doings of the Anglican Communion (I’m at best a part-time Episcopalian and you can get plenty of that stuff elsewhere), but I thought this address by the Primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church was good. Maybe it’s just the Scotsman in me that’s partial to it. 😉

  • Macquarrie on Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

    I returned from Florida yesterday afternoon to find some actual decent weather here in DC. I mean, it’s hot, but not stiflingly, oppressively humid like it has been. And Capitol Hill is noticeably quiet with the congressional recess.

    Having missed Mass yesterday morning we went to last night’s Evensong and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament service at St. Paul’s, the parish we’ve been attending.

    Evensong was lovely, but I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Benediction service as I’d never been to one before. Though few things could be more calculated to offend one’s Protestant sensibilities, I found it to be very moving: it was a quiet, reflective service of thanksgiving, meditation, and adoration.

    For those not familiar with this type of service (as I wasn’t until last night), it consists of kneeling in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a monstrance while singing hymns (in this case two beautiful hymns by Thomas Aquinas traditionally used for Benediction and Corpus Christi) between which there was a brief meditation by the priest; then the priest blesses the congregation with the Sacrament, making the sign of the cross over them with the monstrance; finally, the congregation responds in prayer using a version of the Divine Praises and the singing of Psalm 117 with an appropriate antiphon.

    By the door there was a helpful pamphlet written by none other than the late John Macquarrie, explaining the meaning and value of the Benediction service. Macquarrie breaks it into three essential parts: contemplation, the blessing, and thanksgiving/adoration. He calls it an “amazingly simple and beautifully proportioned act of worship, and although it is very brief, it has a wonderful completeness.” I have to agree with that judgment.

    Macquarrie writes:

    God does not leave us with just some vague general knowledge of himself. It is true that St. Thomas believed that there is a “natural theology” and that every thinking man can form some idea of God. But beyond this, we believe also in God’s “revelation” by which he has extended and purified our knowledge of him. We may think of revelation as meaning that at particular times and places and in particular events and persons, God, as it were, has focused his presence and has caused to shine brightly and clearly before us that knowledge of himself which otherwise we can only dimly grasp. The great events in Israel’s history were “revelations” of this kind. Above all, Jesus Christ was “the true light that lightens every man” (John 1:9), the great focus of God’s presence and acting in history. But Christ in turn appointed the bread and wine of the Eucharist to be the focus in which generations to come would find anew his presence. Anglican theologians have wisely avoided trying to give too precise a formulation of Christ’s “real presence” in the Eucharist, but they have consistently affirmed it and it is, of course, implicit in our liturgy. It is in terms of this focusing of our Lord’s presence that the service of Benediction is to be understood — and also justified, if anyone thinks it needs justifying. Psychologically speaking, we need some concrete, visible manifestation toward which to direct our devotion; theologically speaking, this is already provided for us by our Lord’s gracious focusing of his presence in the Blessed Scarament.

    When this is understood, complaints about “idolatry” or “fetichism” are seen to be beside the point. Let us assure any who may be perturbed over such matters that we are not being so stupid as to worship a wafer, nor do we have such an archaic and myth-laden mentality that we believe the object before us to be charged with magical power. Rather, it is in and through the Sacrament that we adore Christ, because we, being men and not angels, have need of an earthly manifestation of the divine presence, and because he, in his grace and mercy, has promised to grant us his presence in this particular manifestation.

  • A 21st century latitudinarianism

    I’m traveling for work, currently staying at a resort in Florida for a company meeting. There’s a reason people don’t vacation in Florida in August it turns out. Though it may actually be more pleasant here than it was in DC when I left…

    Anyhoo, my flight was delayed for three hours, which gave me time to make it through a big chunk of Keith Ward’s Re-Thinking Christianity. This has been billed as a sequel of sorts to Pascal’s Fire, and the themes will be familiar to anyone who’s read much of Ward’s other work.

    Ward is an anomaly in some ways. He’s liberal in certain respects, wanting to subject Christianity to critical scrutiny (the book jacket has blurbs from Hans Kung and John Shelby Spong), but he’s also a staunch defender of theological realism and natural theology against the attacks both of its atheistic despisers like Richard Dawkins and non-realist religious thinkers like Don Cupitt. Ward also affirms the Resurrection, the possibility of miracles, and the doctrines of the Incarnation and Trinity, though sometimes in ways that might make those of a more traditionalist bent somewhat uneasy.

    The main thrust of Re-Thinking Christianity is to argue for a more pluralist and generous Christian theology in part by appealing to the history of, well, rethinking Christian beliefs. This process of rethinking, Ward argues, didn’t begin with the modern period, or the Enlightenment, or the Reformation, but goes back to the very beginning of Christianity. If a certain theological revisionism is part of the warp and woof of Christian theology, then further development can’t be ruled out a priori.

    Ward contends that this process is discernible in the New Testament itself, where we see a variety of theological perspectives existing side-by-side and can trace some evidence of development. For instance, it seems that at least some early Christians expected an imminent parousia followed by the restoration of Israel with Jesus and the Apostles ruling an earthly kingdom. In time this Jewish messianic gospel came to be eclipsed by John’s logos theology and Paul’s drama of death-and-resurrection. Even Paul himself seems to have moved from an early belief that the Lord would return soon to a longer time horizon for his eschatology.

    Ward’s aim isn’t to debunk later developments by pointing out their divergence from some early pristine Jewish gospel. Quite the opposite in some ways. He sees the process of re-thinking as drawing out the implications of the Christian response to God as disclosed in Jesus when this conviction is set in different contexts.

    Unlike some 19th and 20th century liberal theologians (and some more recent neo-orthodox ones), Ward isn’t interested in purging the “simple message of Jesus” from alleged Hellenistic accretions. In his discussion of the early centuries of the Church during which the great ecumenical creeds were hammered out he affirms the value of using the tools and concepts of Greek philosophy to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the universal divine wisdom, as the logos theology of some of the early Fathers did. This was both a salutary response to the intellectual and cultural context in which they found themselves and a creative use of ideas that would’ve been foreign to Jesus and the Apostles to deepen their apprehension of the divine mystery.

    Ward also points out that recognizing the process of rethinking that has gone on over the centuries makes it more difficult to ascribe a sacrosanct status to particular expressions of the faith. For instance, medieval conceptualizations of the Atonement or purgatory can rightly be seen as innovations that have to be judged on their merits rather than simply accepted as “the traditional view.” Old innovations aren’t necessarily more correct than more recent ones.

    The Reformation, Ward thinks, elevated the principles of pluralism and re-thinking even if in some cases it was against the intentions of the Reformers themselves. Replacing the Pope with the Bible as the supreme religious authority may not in theory demand a proliferation of interpretations of the Christian faith, but this is what happened as a consequence of the inability of all parties to agree on the correct interpretation of the Bible. But rather than lament this fact, he sees it as a step toward recognizing that the things of God will always yield divergent interpretations and thinks that Christians should accept this as a fact of life rather than insisting on the absolute correctness of their interpretation (or that of their church, sect, pastor, favorite theologian, etc.).

    If the Reformation yielded at lest a de facto more pluralistic Christianity, the Enlightenment and succeeding centurie pushed this principle even further. The critical approach to the Bible and church history, the revolution in the understanding of the natural world, and radical changes in social affairs all helped to undermine the certainties of Christendom. The appeal to authority and tradition largely ceased to carry the weight that it had even for many of the Reformers. The new knowledge yielded by science and critical historical investigation haven’t yet, Ward thinks, been fully assimilated into Christianity. They call for re-thinking many of the traditional expressions and conceptualizations of things like original sin, the Incarnation and Atonement, and the nature and destiny of the cosmos.

    On the whole Ward thinks that this can be an enrichment of Christian thought and faith. For instance, a cosmos as vast and intricate as the one revealed to us by modern astronomy and physics, perhaps populated with many species of intelligent life, can give us a greatly expanded vision of God’s power and providence as well as a richer and more diverse vision of God’s kingdom.

    Ward examines one particular tradition that has tried to assimilate the findings of science and critical history into Christian faith, the German liberal tradition associated with Harnack, Ritsschl, and Troeltsch. While Ward admires the way in which they tried to focus on the ethical core of Christianity, their distrust of metaphysics, de-Judaized Jesus, and radical skepticism about the reliability of the Gospels leave us with a seriously impoverished faith. He argues that the principles undergirding such skepticism beg major metaphysical questions and that it’s possible to affirm Jesus as the Incarnation of God in history even while accepting the principles of historical criticism and the findings of modern science. Neither history nor science commit us to the kind of metaphysical reductionism that is often passed off in their names.

    Ultimately what Ward thinks we should take away from this history of re-thinking Christianity is not that it’s impossible or unreasonable to affirm traditional Christian beliefs such as the Resurrection or divinity of Jesus. It’s that we can no longer take for granted that the way in which we formulate those truths is final and adequate to reality. Ward doesn’t put it this way, but you might call this an “eschatological reservation” about all our theological claims. Since in this world we see through a glass darkly all of our ideas about God and attempts to describe the divine reality will fall short. Consequently, we should maintain a sense of humility about our beliefs, especially those that lie away from the center of core Christian commitments or are the result of fine philosophical distinctions and abstract argument (he uses the example of the arguments over the nature of the Trinity).

    If there’s one place where I might quibble it’s that Ward doesn’t seem to have a very strong sense of the consensus of the Church as at least having a significant presumption in its favor. Granted that re-thinking has always occurred, doesn’t the burden of proof lie on the innovator? It’s hard to say exactly what this burden consists in or what kinds of considerations merit overturning a settled conviction, but it seems to me that if we affirm that the Spirit guides the Church, then we will be inclined to think that she has gotten at least many of the important things rigit over the long haul. I’m not sure Ward would deny this, but he does say things that seem to suggest that more traditional beliefs don’t enjoy special privileges here, whereas I’d want to say that beliefs which have stood the test of time shouldn’t be lightly cast aside.

    What Ward seems to me to be defending is in many ways a kind of old-fashioned Anglican latitudinarianism. This was the view that required agreement on essentials but allowed diversity on inessentials, with “essentials” being defined rather narrowly. Thus debates about the precise nature of the Trinity, free will and predestination, and other thorny theological issues, disputes over which had led to bloodshed, could be left as matters over which people of good will could disagree. In our time we might add debates about various ethical issues which threaten to split the churches. Clearly the challenge is walking the line between latitudinarianism and indifferentism, but that might be something worth doing in a time when dogmatism seems nearly as prevalent as ever.

    In a follow-up post I’ll talk a little about the balance of the book where Ward discusses re-thinking Christianity in the thought of Hegel and Schleiermacher, Christianity in a global context, and the relationship between liberalism of the kind he’s been defending and liberation.