The Judicious Mr. Hooker and the Episcopal Church

I'm sorry for yet another Anglican post, but I fear this is of interest to others of other churches as well.

I'm reading a bit of Richard Hooker, often considered the primordial Anglican, or at least the first Anglican rationalist. And for that, he is sometimes enlisted by the liberal strand within Anglicanism as a sort of founding father (itself ironic, for it seems strange that liberals would make appeals to authority. But I digress). Among other things, he got himself in a big broohaha because of a sermon he preached in which he suggested that many of his English forbears, although led astray by popish errors, may well nevertheless, in the mercy of God, be saved. When the puritans flipped out about that, he preached another sermon to defend himself, "A Learned Discourse on Justification."

In it, as we might expect from a very rational thinker, he makes distinctions, perhaps the biggest being the difference between ERROR and HERESY. Error is what we do in our papers all the time, we make mistakes: but if we're corrected by the truth of God's Word, we humbly submit. Heresy is when we obstinately oppose ourselves to the truth of God's Word, even after a brother or sister (or council) has attempted to lead us out of our error. Good stuff, that.

So, his popish forbears were undoubtedly in error, because they believed that they were saved, not by Christ alone through grace by faith, but by works as well. But they weren't heretics, because they sinned in ignorance, and no one corrected them. They were in error; and, to paraphrase St. Peter, love covers a multitude of theological errors. And besides, surely on their deathbeds thousands of poor English farmers said something like, "I am a poor sinner, and I trust in Christ alone, he is my only Savior."

Now for the second distinction. One could either deny the foundation of the Christian faith DIRECTLY or INDIRECTLY. What might that involve? Well, he's pretty plain about the foundation: "salvation purchased by the death of Christ." This, of course, includes the identity of Christ (viz., Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy), his saving work, and, by derivation, sola gratia, sola fide. In short, Saracens and infidels deny the faith DIRECTLY, because they do not confess what we confess in the Creeds. Papists deny the faith INDIRECTLY: they confess the Creeds, they believe in salvation through Christ alone, but their confusion of inherent for external righteousness denies by consequent that salvation is, strictly, through Christ alone.

Now, the interesting thing is that Hooker pulls together his two distinctions. If a papist, who denies the Faith indirectly, does so merely in error: surely we should not doubt that God, in his mercy, will grant salvation to him as well. But if that same papist obstinately insists that apart from works he cannot be saved, he is a heretic, and his indirect denial of the foundation becomes, shall we say, more dangerous. But there is still hope, says Hooker, because even the stubborn papist still denies the foundation only indirectly: he still confesses the Nicene Creed.

Then he makes this really interesting observation, again because he is a very rational man. He points out that the ancient fathers had two major sorts of arguments on their hands: first, against those who denied the faith DIRECTLY (Origen contra Celsus); second, those who did so INDIRECTLY (Augustine contra Pelagius). Those of the first sort had to prove the foundation; those of the second argued from the foundation, and showed thereby why their opponents were indirectly denying it. It doesn't do any good to argue from the authority of Scripture or the Creeds that, say, God is Trinity, if one is arguing with someone who doesn't accept those authorities. On the other hand, if you're dealing with an Arius who really does believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then your conversation is going to be of a different sort. This is all very much like Thomas, by the way; that's why Hooker is interesting.

Which all leads to my question. Is it really fair to call, say, Spong, a heretic? I have in the past, and I'm starting to wonder about that. I think he's really a pagan. And the same goes for others of a like mind. What do you guys think? And, how do you think this changes the way we should craft our discussions/arguments on this front?

Now the hard question. "All infidels deny the foundation of faith directly: by consequent, many a Christian man, yea whole Christian churches, have denied it, and do deny it at this present day. Christian churches denying the foundation of Christianity? Not directly, for then they cease to be Christian churches; but by consequent, in respect whereof we condemn them as erroneous, although for holding the foundation, we do and must hold them Christian." If Hooker could say that about Rome, and justify the English schism, I can't even begin to imagine why I should have any scruples about "splitting" from the Episcopal "church." That's not my question. My question is simply, has TEC denied the faith directly? Is the Episcopal church, a church?

Mary in the Old Testament

Gary Anderson has published a good article about Mary that I commend to all. It also provides a helpful reminder of the "two-testaments to Christ" hermeneutic that Ellen and Richard and Kavin teach...Gary Anderson WAS at Notre Dame, but is now headed to Toronto Wycliffe Hall to be a part of the new Centre for Biblical Interpretation that includes Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz. They think they blow away the Duke faculty in talent (insists Seitz).

You may find Gary's article, Mary in the Old Testament, here.

I now await the first wiseacre to note the irony in me of all people posting an article about Mary...

Models of Communion: Performing Our Christian Identity

Dear friends,

I wanted to let you know about an essay I wrote that I hope you will take time to read. It is published by the Anglican Communion Institute right here.

There is a preface that talks about a vocational change for me - about me seeking ordination within the Episcopal Church. That part was edited by Ephraim Radner, and he knows something about my future that I don't know. He may have found a bishop within TEC willing to take a risk on a conservative, but I don't know that yet. The fact is that I withdrew from candidacy for ordination in the ACN in protest of their public statements disavowing Canterbury and embracing global schism. The preface explains this briefly, and the essay develops the theological case that led me to that decision. And many of my friends have urged me to be ordained instead within TEC, but there are many ways to skin a cat, and I feel quite confident that the Lord will give me both the skinning knife and the cat he wants me to skin in due time.

One question I have of you. It occurs to me that I arrived at Duke in 2005 a liberal Protestant who thought Catholic was a dirty word, and the free church mentality was simply the Gospel truth that Saint Tom (Jefferson) had achieved for us. Now I find myself a frickin' catholic! Did this happen to any of you? And if so, how did this happen? Is it in the water?

This essay will require at least two tylenol and 20-30 minutes to read. All of you will recognize that nothing in it is original, but is standard Duke-ese. But I think you may find it provocative, particularly in light of Tom's question about the nature of being a Christian.

I wish you all God's richest blessings, and I can't wait to be reunited in just a few weeks.

Craig

Who then is a Christian?

I'm adapting John Wesley's Sermon, On God's Vineyard (#107), for my own sermon this Sunday. As I was reading his sermon I was reminded of an old conversation that Wilson and I had last year. I submit Wesley's answer to the question in the title:

Who then is a Christian, according to the light which God hath vouchsafed to this people? He that, being "justified by faith, hath peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;" and, at the same time, is "born again," "born from above," "born of the Spirit;" inwardly changed from the image of the devil, to that "image of God wherein he was created:" He that finds the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto him; and whom this love sweetly constrains to love his neighbor, every man, as himself: He that has learned of his Lord to be meek and lowly in heart, and in every state to be content: He in whom is that whole mind, all those tempers, which were also in Christ Jesus: He that abstains from all appearance of evil in his actions, and that offends not with his tongue: He that walks in all the commandments of God, and in all his ordinances, blameless: He that, in all his intercourse with men, does to others as he would they should do to him; and in his whole life and conversation, whether he eats or drinks, or whatsoever he doeth, doeth all to the glory of God.

Cur Deus Homo: Badiou Redux (aka - my random thoughts from the OBGYN waiting room)

Socratics (et al): Among the many things I've read this summer was Hallward's excellent treatment of Badiou. I've also spent a lot of time polishing and reworking my Campell essay in which Badiou plays a significant part. Thus, Alain and his notion of Event, Subject, and Truth have been rattling around my head all summer. And, as he and Campbell are frequently invoked in our discussions and posts, I thought I'd post this (semi)random reflection about he and Anselm, with a cameo by J Denny Weaver. It is literally a transcription of some journal paragraphs I made in the waiting room of our OBGYN this past week. (If you somehow have not yet heard, we're expecting our first child this fall.) It's not so much an argument, as a rumination about how Badiou might allow us to retool Anselm in such a way as to better achieve what Weaver unsuccessfully attempts in Nonviolent Atonement.



Cur Deus Homo: Badiou Redux


"None but man should satisfy God's justice, but none but God can satisfy man's debt" - Anslem
"That which he did not assume, he did not redeem" - Naziansus
"God became man, that man might become God" - Athanasius


Badiou contends that the crucifixion/death are not constitutive of redemption. "Death as such counts for nothing in the operation of salvation...Resurrection alone is a given of the event which mobilizes the site whose operation is salvation...For death is an operation in the situation, an operation that immanentizes the evental site, while resurrection is the event as such" (70). Death and the crucifixion belong to the configuration (state) of this present age - the flesh. Resurrection is the irruption (event) of the age to come - the spirit. Though the rhetoric is perhaps overstated, the logic seems right. It is, perhaps, a better articulation of what J. Denny Weaver attempts in Nonviolent Atonement. How does this map onto Anselm's Cur Deus Homo? First there is the Chalcedonian insistance, "That which he did not assume, he did not redeem." And second there is Anselm's own formulation of man's obligation and God's ability. Though the penal (and/or economic) inflection is incompatible with Badiou. The "should" and "can" cannot be construed as debt and payment. That is, contra Anselm, redemption cannot be achieved via a satisfaction reducible to death/crucifixion.

What then? First, in order for redemption to be real, for a truly new subjective path to be opened, Christ must be fully human. If his obedience and resurrection are purely and solely predicated on his divinity, they are unrepeatable and thus unavailable. But this does not merely reduce to a reiteration of the subsequent Abelardian "moral exemplar" paradigm. Christ is not just an example to be followed via imitatio; he is the prototype and paradigm of participatio. This is the real, ontological, subjective import of being the second Adam.

This leaves the second clause of the modified Anselmian dictum; "only God can." And here the moves become more challenging. Two things are necessary. First, one must specify why the above subjective path and participatio not only are not, but further cannot be made available otherwise. And second, one must specify how the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection make these available, without adverting to a substitutionary-satisfaction schema. What, then, are the possibilities for nonviolent redemption (even Weaver's choice of "atonement" betrays his point)?


The first collapses back into the "man must" clause. Only by actually being human is participatio (and thereby imitatio) possible. This is problematic for two reasons. First it is open to an adoptionist schema. God could adopt and divinize a human, and subsequently do the same with every other human. Second, there is no way to justify this other than as a dogmatic claim. And I do not mean dogmatic in the Barthian sense of "on grounds internal to the Church, her Scriptures, and her Tradition. Absent the substitutionary-satisfaction motif, this claim is itself specifically dogmatic, within the Barthian generic sense of dogmatic. Or as Badiou would prefer it if he were a theologian, this can only be declared axiomatically. But this would leave the substance and rationale of the "only God can" clause ill-defined.

A second possibility is to argue on narratological grounds. This is, in nuce, Weaver's line. The focal text here would be the Parable of the Vineyard (Matthew 21, Mark 12, Luke 20, Thomas 65-66). The can and must relate as an narrative imperative of divine self-disclosure as the longsuffering, forebearing, and forgiving God whose own self-son is sacrificed before an ultimate retributive intervention. God must do so in order to sufficiently reveal the peaceful and reconciliatory character of the Trinity's immanent life and redemptive movement toward humanity. While compelling on narratological grounds, this does nothing to clarify why participatio is necessarily unavailable otherwise, or how it is available subsequently. Thus it collapses into the previous dogmatic-axiomatic declaration, albeit as an amplification. And/or it amounts to a theological iteration of the exemplar model, except that in this case the exemplification is of God's own self, rather than a moral ideal.

Thus it seems we must seek another option, something approaching the Christus Victor paradigm, but with ontological and ethical import for human subjects. On this paradigm, the necessity is full and absolute submission to the powers - obedience even unto death on the cross, and then their overcoming. "Only God can" overcome and make a show of the powers via resurrection. Only God can take their ultimate dominion and turn it into their ultimate destruction. Thus the specific necessity of death is not payment (juridical or economic), but instead is the demonstration that worldly/imperial power/violence in extremis - the state-sanctioned torture and lynching of the Holy One are ultimately powerless. To be clear, this necessity is a negative one; death and crucifixion demonstrate the impotence of worldly power/redemption. Resurrection, the correlative positive necessity make possible redemption (cf. Sarah Coakley Powers & Submissions).


Still this is insufficient. While this retains the necessity of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection for redemption and avoids the substitiutonary-satisfaction misstep, "the only God can" remains somewhat elusive. For this still does not definitively exclude adoptionism. To rephrase this as a question, Why must the second person of the Trinity, as preexisitent logos rather than adopted human, be the one to submit to, and suffer at the hands of the powers in order to defeat them by resurrection?

Again, what options, possibilities, and avenues are available? It seems that the Ascension must somehow figure into the discussion. But again, how is the ascension of an adopted human to be precluded (as it must)? Perhaps the descent-ascent is required for participatio in that humanity must be assumed by/into the divine life of the Trinity. Still though this narrows the adoptionist avenue, it does not definitively exclude it. Somehow resurrection must exclusively be the possibility of divine being. Yet this must also, subsequently, be(come) a possibility for human beings. And if this is the case, are we not then compelled to take an Orthodox position concerning theosis?

And again, is there any means of making such assertions other than on (specifically) dogmatic grounds? It seems that the necessarily peaceful and nonviolent nature of the Trinity (and thus the cosmos) require that the person who submits and suffers at the hands of the powers in order to defeat and to make a show of them via resurrection not only must be God's own self, but must always have been God's own self. That is, an adopted second person would amount to a coercively conscripted second person, and thus not fully escape the paradigm of redemptive violence.

This seems to be an adequate "Badiouan" rearticulation of the Anselmian dictum (man must, but only God can) that escapes the taint of redemptive violence implicit in substitutionary-satisfaction paradigms of atonement. And it precludes any recourse to adoptionism. It also gives a correlative account of both participatio and imitatio compatible with Badiou's formal account of Event, Truth, and Subject. And while the relationship between participatio and imitatio remains generically dogmatic (Barthian sense), the additional specific sense is removed.