Recently J.K. Rowling revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay, and that he had fallen in love with the (eventually) evil wizard Grindelwald as a youth, which partly explains his ideological mistakes made with that wizard. The revelation came when a student asked her if the headmaster who always spoke so highly of the power of love had ever fallen in love himself. I think that this is an opportunity for a wise person to say something about the current debate on homosexuality in culture and church, esp. in the Anglican communion. Unfortunately, I will speaking on the matter instead.
Archive for the 'Anglicanism' Category
Janet has invited us to read Shusaku Endo’s Silence with her in this advent season, partly as an opportunity for Episcopalians to reflect on the situation within the Anglican Communion. This from her site:
Right now, we Episcopalians find ourselves in a place where the same diametrically opposed interpretations of our actions are being offered us. How can we know for sure? We have to trust in the God we know. I have never thought that the real question is, does God exist? No, the real question is, who and what is God?
And the question, who is God, what is God, is also the question: what have I found in my journey that compels my allegiance and is worthy of my deepest devotion?
Continue reading ‘Invitation to Read Shusako Endo’s Silence’
As one of the only theology blogs that is self-consciously Anglican, or as we are now (informally) referring to ourselves, “Catholic and Anglican”, we try to steer clear of the political debates that seem to pre-occupy most other Anglican and Episcopalian bloggers. It’s our way of maintaining the original focus of TLOU, that is, to assist in bringing Anglicanism’s voice to the theological table. Not that there’s anything wrong per se with the polity conversation. Rather, many of us perceive an imbalance overall between polity conversations and theology dialog (although, we give big thanks to sites like Project Canterbury for helping to restore this balance).
Today, however, I think it’s important to draw your attention to the newest conversation at Per Caritatem, “What is Anglicanism?” Cynthia refers to the article in First Things by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda, which some of you might remember from one of our posts back in August. Cynthia cuts right to the chase and asks what’s at stake in Orombi’s overt dismissal of Anglicanism’s essential Britishness. “The long season of British hegemony is over,” he says, and calls for a significantly more decentralized and radically Evangelical notion of Anglicanism. (Mark Noll, the Reformation is apparently not over.)
So, I’m bringing this to your attention today not to ruffle political feathers, but because I think what is at stake is Anglicanism’s unique theological voice. As Orombi would have it, one is either akin to the non-denominational, non-episcopal churches of Evangelical North America - this seems to be where his own church is heading - or one might as well be stuck in an hegemonic relationship with Canterbury or Rome. Either way you have it, I suggest, here’s no distinctive Anglican voice for Orombi.
Please read Cynthia’s post, and if you feel so inclined, join the conversation.
I was meeting with my advisor yesterday, and we spoke briefly about JH Newman. The prof asked me where I saw myself fitting in theologically in the Anglican tradition. I didn’t quite know how to respond I remain poorly read in many of the Anglican theologians with whom I would align myself. I guess I could have answered Rowan Williams, but that would have been to evade the obvious question. I think he was asking me if I align myself with a robust (ahem, catholic) theological tradition that looks to Aquinas, etc. for its systematic and philosophical guidance. Seeing as how he is a Newman scholar, I suppose he would have expected something like Newman. Guessing that, I sincerely noted that I hoped to be better read in Newman upon the end of my degree. Add to that Hooker, Cranmer, Taylor, all the Cambridge Platonists, Farrer, Blake, and Herbert - and those are just the Anglicans!
DJW at ipsumesse has offered two meaty posts on Newman - the first is a brief, but helpful introduction to Newman (the man and theologian) that will help you develop a coat hook, so to speak, upon which you can hang the content of … the 2nd post, on Conscience. His exposition of conscience in Newman leads to an interesting comment on Intelligent Design:
It is interesting to note the contrast between Newman’s view and that of contemporary ‘Intelligent design’ proponents. Newman states flat out that “I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design”. Perhaps all ‘ID’ theorists should bear in mind that “The Almighty is something infinitely different from a principle, or a centre of action, or a quality, or a generalisation of phenomena”.
I imagine the difficult thing for some of us (Anglicans) with Newman is reconciling our appreciation for his work, and maybe even pursuing it on either academic or personal levels, with his conversion to Roman Catholicism.
August 13th is the day that Anglicans, especially Irish Anglicans, remember Jeremy Taylor (d. Aug 13, 1667) whose various clerical posts included serving as chaplain to Charles I and, later in life, as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. I first learned of Taylor last year in an article by Edmund Newey titled “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor”.1 Newey’s central thesis relates to the concept of theosis, also called deification, in four Anglicans and the Cambridge Platonists movement in Anglican theology (Wichcote and Cudworth often being considered the first of the Cambridge Platonists). Tonight, I’ll look at Newey’s introduction and exegesis of Hooker. Continue reading ‘Theosis among some Anglicans, part 1′
Update 9/14/07: Per Caritatem has a new post on the Orombi’s article here.
So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.
August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -
Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING
The fourth and fifth sections of the Outlines, chapter 1, continues Hall’s attempt to delineate the natural and supernatural. In my reading, Hall suffers primarily here by delineating science and theology enough that, in so doing, creates an emancipated, secular science that is able to carry on entirely in the absence of theology, regardless of how much he wants it to want the input of faith and the church.
Hall begins by elucidating the “natural order” or the phenomenal world, in which certain observable “laws” or regulating forces maintain a uniformity of experience. However, this uniformity must not mislead one to believe that this is an eternal or everlasting cosmos, as neither science can prove nor revelation attests to such. Rather, revelation states that “this order will, in due time, give place to a new one.” Moreover, the phenomenal world has seen the breaking in of miracles and the supernatural, as testified to by the ancients’ preoccupation with the uniformity of the supernatural long before interest in natural laws grew. “Theological science is more ancient than physical science—in fact, the mother of it.” As such, Hall posits the following division of disciplines:
So long as natural science confines itself to the investigation of nature as such, and theological science to the theistic and spiritual interpretation of facts undeniably established, there can be no conflict. But when natural scientists undertake to advance theological interpretations of their results, a collision is apt to occur between their crude speculations and more mature Theology. And when theologians continue to rely upon exploded views of nature, basing theological speculations upon them, a conflict occurs between out-of-date and up-to-date natural science. As Dr. Pusey says, unscience, not science, is adverse to Faith.
Reason and faith, then, are both important in the theological project. Reason according to Hall is “an intellectual process making for the acquisition of truth… invariably conditioned in its exercise by the will and affections.” Faith, while having several different modes, is here “a department of reason, although dependant upon supernatural grace… the spiritual faculty by which we discern spiritual things.” Thus, being an exercise of reason, “the laws of human reason hold good.” Grace becomes important to Hall here, in that grace is vital to one’s very ability to grasp supernatural knowledge. Consequently, he grants a special place to the sacraments inasmuch as they expose one to grace. Access to grace through faith is most evident in the common statements of faith embraced by the “Greek, Latin, and Anglican (churches)… with but slight verbal variations and with the same meaning… significant, in view of the diversity of races and usages which exists, and the age-long mutual hostility which has prevailed. Such consent is not to be found elsewhere.” Rationalism, then, is not some pure form of access to reason, but is a crippled endeavor simply by virtue of its prima facie rejection of ecclesial authority.
While it seems that Hall’s definition of natural and supernatural probably got a lot of mileage, particularly among more technologically or scientifically minded Christians (Janet comments on this is a previous posting’s comment section), and maybe I’m even detecting a hint of CS Lewis’ Miracles, his language is ultimately uncompelling and rather flat to me. I’m especially uneasy about his division of territory between science and theology. This is possibly due to Hall attempting to hedge the claims of science, and my nostalgia for cosmologies like Maximus’, in which a theological understanding of the world not only precedes but informs a natural one, in which there is no comprehensive understanding of the natural world that does not flow from an initial engagement with that world’s creator. Furthermore, while he tries to ward off the notion of an universal scientific reason, his separation of powers between science and theology seem to grant that there is a space apart from theology in which a kind of positivist and exhaustive scientific knowledge is possible. Of course, it now is commonplace to reject such notions almost entirely on their naivete toward the place of interpretation in all things, scientific or theological. Similarly, one could ask exactly what Hall means by a natural order, and whether investigation of such includes ontology. He certainly isn’t clear as to how broad or narrow he expects the study of the natural order to be, but philosophers might make a convincing case for their autonomy under Hall’s system. Conversely, if anthropology and ontology are theological topics, or at least not wholly secular disciplines, then Hall’s secular science will be surely lacking in its exercise. My thomist friends can probably spell out for me how Thomas answers many of these questions, and I probably should point you all to this book as it helped me flesh a little bit of this out for myself as I was typing this post.
Rowan Williams has awarded the 2007 Michael Ramsey prize to the master of the worldwide order of Dominican Friars, Timothy Radcliffe for his book What is the Point of Being a Christian?
While I would like to see the award used to highlight excellent Anglican scholarship, since academic theology gets relatively little attention (whether by Anglicans or otherwise), hopefully the award will raise more awarness about Michael Ramsey’s work.
I suggest to you that as the Cross and the resurrection were the spearhead of the gospel’s relevance and potency in the first century, so they can be also for our contemporary world. Ours is a world full of suffering and frustration: of what significance to it is Jesus who lived and died nearly two thousand years ago? The answer is chiefly this: that in the death and resurrection he shows not only the way for human beings, but the true image of God himself. Is there, within or beyond our suffering and frustrated universe, any purpose, way, meaning, sovereignty? We answer, yes, and the death and resurrection of Jesus portray this purpose, way, meaning, and sovereignty as living through dying, as losing self to find self, as the power of sacrificial love.
Thanks to Ben for the link.
Per Caritatem has an interesting 3 part series on a Reformed View of the Eucharist by Mike Vendsel that just ended last thursday. Vendsel reviews Douglas Farrow’s article, “Between the Rock and a Hard Place: In Support of (something like) a Reformed View of the Eucharist”. I must confess, I didn’t know there was such a thing. Just goes to show the state of catechesis when I was growing up. Farrow’s article basically posits two views: 1.is the “traditional” reformed view that attempts to safeguard a notion of Christ’s ontological body, existing in space and time, quite distinct from the sacramental elements. This perspective reminds me of something a youth leader said to me back in high school: “We don’t have sacraments; we have ordinances.” At the time, I took him to be mincing words, but since then I have come to wonder if it really wasn’t just an excuse to not deal with the tensions of being in a rather new tradition that has failed to articulate a metaphysic. Anyway, the problem with this for Farrow is how it radically seperates our materiality from Christ’s, and the Gnostic connotation of the worshipper engaged in some mental/spiritual connection to Christ.
The 2nd view is is the RC perspective, best articulated by Thomas, summarized by Farrow:
“by virtue of His divine omnipresence and omnipotence as the Logos, Jesus is able to provide on earth a eucharistic form of His humanity under the accidents of bread and wine, making present (albeit non-spatially) the actual substance of His exalted body and blood” (p. 171)
Calvin provides the foil to this view. For Calvin, the power of the Eucharist is not in dilluting Christ’s humanity, but rather in transporting us to heaven in union with Christ - a kind of beatific experience, it seems.
I won’t summarize the rest of the posts from Per Caritatem here, but rather direct your attention to the links to each post: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The series followed a post on an article on the Eucharist by Catherine Pickstock, “Thomas Aquinas and the Quest for the Eucharist.” The post highlights Pickstock’s work with “Desire” and the allegory of the Grail. Here’s an interesting quote from Pickstock that seems to encapsulate most of the summary from Per Caritatem:
“Thus we can see that what the Eucharist is is desire. Although we know via desire, or wanting to know, and this circumstance alone resolves the aporia of learning, beyond this we discover that what there is to know is desire. But not desire as absence, lack and perpetual postponement; rather, desire as the free flow of actualization, perpetually renewed and never foreclosed” (pp. 178-179).
These posts got me thinking about how one might capture the distinctiveness of an Anglican view of the Eucharist. Rowan Williams talks about Hooker’s doctrine of Christology and Sacraments in his book, Anglican Identities. A major theme Williams brings out is Hooker’s emphasis of the incarnation as the redemption (or “restoration”) of humanity via the work of the Holy Spirit, not simply a relationship of solidarity by virtue of his being human: “it is a relation with a humanity itself already transfigured (not annihilated)by the outpouring of a divine gift.” The Holy Spirit can act upon and through us in multiple ways, including by not limited to the Eucharist - however one may theorize the relationship of Christ to the elements.
“Papist error about the Eucharist is less in the doctrine of transubstantiation as such than in the insistence on this as the only legitimate account of how Christ acts… Hooker can say, boldly, ‘there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us (67.2, p. 358); [similarly] Herbert argues that Christ died for humanity, not for bread, so it is the former that needs changing…”
While Hooker doesn’t seem to want to spend a lot of time fleshing out the metaphysics of the Sacraments, the point is clear: Christ acts on us through his gifts. “Receive the gift of divine action and the effects of divine action follow - in Christ’s humanity, in the bread and the wine, in the holy person.”
Ch. 1 Q. 3 of Hall’s Theological Outlines gets into the relations of miracles to the natural order of things with Hall holding that miracles are necessary in order for evolution to take place:
The advance of the aion requires innovations, steps, and the entrance of higher forces than those previously resident in the kosmos. The evolutionary hypothesis requires this supposition; and, unless we become materialists, we must assume that the progress of cosmical development, however gradual, depends upon an involution of forces which are supernatural to the previously existing natures which undergo development.
Maybe someone (Janet?) can let me know if this is hopelessly out of date. . . . but I do like his his use of cosmos and aion, reminds me a little bit of the way the structuralists talked about synchrony (cosmos) and diachrony (aion). Again perhaps Janet can let me know if this is off or on, here or there, or neither. I am a little surprised that Hall considers these evolutionary advances to be miracles (supernatural events which inspire wonder) rather than events like the sacrament of the host, which is supernatural but invisible and thus not technically a miracle.
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