Happy New Year to all, and to all a goodnight. But first, a short post.
Alan Jacobs is cool, almost unassailably so (his leaving TEC, considered), and shows us how it done Anglican style in the current issue of B&C, here. Jacobs points out, as I agree, that this is an exciting, yet trying, time to be Anglican; a time, he quotes Bonhoeffer here, for “prayer and righteous action.”
A choice excerpt for your reading pleasure, and then, later, after the alchohol has worn off, read the rest of the article. While I might not feel as pessimistic as he, his final thoughts are worth getting to.
…I remind myself that the churches of the Anglican world are governed by bishops, and I am not a bishop. One of the chief reasons I have held firm to Anglicanism over the years is that I believe that the threefold order of ministry—bishop, priest, and deacon—is the model taught by the apostles, the governance particularly approved by God. In this model I, as a layman—even though I am also a member of the priesthood of all believers—have a highly circumscribed role. If my pastor asks me to teach, I teach; otherwise I shut up. In the unlikely (and unwelcome) event of a bishop of the Church asking for my thoughts I would share them; otherwise I keep them to myself, at least in public. The decisions that will shape the future of the Anglican Communion will be made by bishops, not by laypeople, nor even by priests; if I care about that Communion—and I do—I had best be praying for those bishops, and not repeating the error of Job in darkening counsel by words without knowledge.
I told you he was cool.
I’m never sure whether I’m freshly dismayed or freshly reassured every time I’m reminded of how deeply protestant I am, much as I go about in catholic circles with catholic friends. (I use protestant in its general, uncapitalized form since it’s more accurate to say that I’m usually protesting something or other, rather than doctrinally similar to any of the famous reformers.) More specific theological arguments aside, I find it absolutely impossible to imagine that the ministerial structure of the church is “particularly approved by God”, so much so that I always struggle to maintain the idea that what people who might assert such a thing mean when they say “God” has anything to do with the infinite, antecedent-to-being mystery I believe toward.
I’m tempted to say that the primary failure of such thinking is lack of imagination: that such people have not imagined the potential vastness of humanity’s story, stretching on into the future, into and past forms we cannot begin to comprehend. It seems to me that God will be the god of those ages, long past a time when hierarchal structures like these have lost any kind of meaning. Or, leave aside the future: it seems to me that such people have not considered how arbitrary Western Civilization is, let alone the particular forms of the church. The church seems to me like a mathematical proof. It is a sure argument pointing to truth; like all such proofs, there are entirely different arrangements discovered and yet-to-be-discovered pointing to the same truth.
At any rate, having not read any Jacobs but what you just quoted here, I may not be speaking to an issue which is very near to him. I just thought I’d leave some of my thoughts as a bit of appreciation for your pointing me to your blog.
Bon Annee!
I may be wrong, but I think Jacobs attends an AMIA (Anglican Mission in America) church; if this is so, then he still is in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury via some non-American bishop.
Although I appreciate, really I do, Nate’s sentiments about hierarchy, etc., I don’t think we can easily toss aside any notion of hierarchy. For example, God presumably is still ‘over’ creatures, God is still Creator, Savior and Lord of fallen human beings? This seems to me to suggest a hierarchical relationship btwn. God and creatures. Furthermore, as I parent I feel responsibility for my toddler. Why? Well, I have a peculiar relationship with her such that I make decisions for her own well-being, and in fact, legally and morally speaking I am ‘over’ her for a season of life. I think it’d be tragic if children were deemed in every way equal to his/her parents; of course, the relationship through time will change as the child matures and is able to be responsible for herself, nonetheless there is still a kind of hierarchy btwn. parent and child.
And, to the heart of Christian doctrine, even on the Cappodocian ‘generic view’ of the divine essence and the constitution of divine persons (divine essence personal property) there is still a hierarchy insofar as the Father communicates to the Son the divine essence, etc. So even here, in the ‘principiative order’ of the generation (and spiration) of divine persons, one divine person (Father) is prior to the others. This traditionally is called the monarchy of the Father. Still, it should be known that this view is less hierarchical than Athanasius’s ‘derivation view’ of how the Son and Holy Spirit receive the divine essence–on this view the divine essence is proper to the Father, and the Son and Holy Spirit are constituted by it derivatively by being related to the Father.
Anyways, I say all the above so as to slow down the ‘I hate modernity and all its hierarchies’ sentiment. Certain hierarchies in the end might be a good thing and not merely a Machiavellian kind of hierarchy.