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.

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!