During this sad time of division in the church, fundamental matters of ecclesiology come to the fore again with a new urgency.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recently re-articulated one such fundamental matter: that the basic organ of the church which binds the catholic church together is the diocese, centered on the bishop, and not the province (or the congregation, for that matter). See here.

This catholic and patristic perspective is definitely shared by and elaborated on by the Windsor Report and the proposed covenant, as well as the theology (ie, the communion ecclesiology of John Zizioulas and others) and texts (ie, The Virginia Report as well as The Church of the Triune God: The Cypress Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican – Orthodox Theological Dialogue) upon which they rest.

Read here about how the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has virtually destroyed the Christian community in Iraq.

Catherine Pickstock gives the word “liturgy” a wide resonance. But she also devotes many pages of her book AW to analyzing a specific liturgy: the celebration of the Christian Eucharist, in which the elements of bread and wine are said to become the body and blood of Christ. Drawing particularly on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, she asks how Christ is made present in the Mass.

I found that the understanding of presence that you get in Aquinas’ understanding of the Eucharist is not the kind of fetishized presence of modernity. It is not one that is somehow “enthronable” or “stockpileable.” It is a presence which is mysterious, and one which seems to bring the meanings of words together. One thing that stuck Aquinas about the Eucharist is that although it is perhaps the highest instance of God’s action through human action on earth, nevertheless it seems to use the most ordinary objects, it seems to use the most banal objects: bread and wine, grape and grain. Nothing could be more local and more summoning or ordinary labor – transport, commerce – all the things which ordinarily seem to take us away from “high piety” – and one of the things that A says about the choice of elements is precisely their ordinariness and their association with human conviviality – eating and drinking and the good smell of the bread and wine. Plus it was significant for him that bread and wine involve human trade and travel and commerce and so forth, and so the lowest and most basic elements of human survival and human operation are brought into the moment of heightened realization of divine presence. And so for all these different reasons you can see the ways in which we are being reminded in the Eucharist that there really isn’t an area of human operation which isn’t somehow preincluded in God’s gift. And we’re are reminded also that liturgy is something which all of human action and human operation leads toward and presupposes. If, even, in the manufacturing of bread we are being led toward the Eucharistic celebration, it helps us to reposition our understanding of all human labor as praise of the divine. And again this brings us back to the idea that liturgy isn’t something that we should think about only on Sundays or high feast days but its something that all our human labors might become, that human labor itself might be liturgy. And so there isn’t necessarily a separation between life and liturgy. Even washing up could be offered up as a sort of divine praise. All human actions could be.

And so, equally, if we think of the tree which I referred to earlier as fulfilling its “tree-ness” by worshipping God – and this is the way in which Aquinas saw the world around us, where everything is worshipping God in its own way – and so when the tree fulfills its telos as a tree, that moment of fulfillment is the tree’s worshipping God, or copying God in its own manner. And so a Eucharistic sensibility is one in which one sees everything as participating in praise of the divine.” — Catherine Pickstock in an interview which one can listen to here.

Liturgy, as Catheine Pickstock explains it, signifies an underlying attitude and not just a specific order of celebration. It is, as she says, “a way of being on the way.” A way of receiving, and releasing, what is only ever present in passing.

Liturgy isn’t just going to church on a Sunday. When I was analyzing what a liturgical worldview might be like, I tried to conceive it as a way of life, rather than as a text or as something we did every now and then. And this is something I found in Plato again, when he is looking at the life of the philosopher and the philosopher’s desire to recollect the highest principles of the good and to communicate them to his pupils. He was trying to show that philosophy isn’t a decadent pursuit which occurs on the ancient Greek version of a high table at a college, but rather is a way of life, where everything must be orientated toward a vision of the good, and if one can Christianize that vision…. Well, in a way that is what I’ve been doing in my analysis of liturgy: trying to show how a way of life might help us to unsettle all the dichotomies and pernicious categories that I analyzed in secular modernity.” — Catherine Pickstock, in an interview one can listen to here.

John Milbank sees the church as an encompassing an ultimately cosmic community. And this view is complemented by the emphasis in Catherine Pickstock’s work on liturgy. Liturgy, in its most basic meaning, refers to the order of words and actions that is prescribed for public worship. but in her book After Writing, CP has given the term a much wider meaning. She argues that he muddles and uncertainties in which modern philosophy has ended up can only be overcome by recognizing that language only finally fulfills itself in praise and celebration. That is, in liturgy. And so she she subtitled her book “On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy.”

In my subtitle I was trying to hint at the ultimate argument of my book which is that the spatialization of modernity as I have described it can only be shattered or in some way challenged by a liturgical worldview where one is no longer trying to enthrone one’s own constructs but is now trying to reposition one’s self in that broader context which sees  the whole of reality as arriving from a divine creative source, and that we can only undo these dichotomies by some kind of liturgical enactment. One of the things I did in my book when I was analyzing secular reason is to show that the human self is by definition a divided self when it is trying to enthrone its own constructs. It starts to lead an almost duplicitous life. But a liturgical self is one which acknowledges fully its own dependence on a divine transcendent reality and is so committed to that reality that it can’t admit any divisions or internal contradictions. There is something completely simple about liturgical language. It simply says “I am nothing, and I worship you and I depend on you.” And along with this liturgical worldview comes the recognition that everything around us is in the mode of gift and is a gift from God. And so not only does it affect our relationship with our self and with God, but also our relationship to the world around us, and how we receive it.” — Catherine Pickstock in an interview which one can listen to here.

Catherine Pickstock gives liturgy a much broader sense. She argues that the muddles and uncertainties in which modern philosophy has ended up can only be overcome by recognizing that language only fulfills itself in praise and celebration, that is, in liturgy.

The spatialization of modernity can only really be shattered or in some way challenged by a liturgical world view in which one is no longer trying to enthrone its own constructs but to reposition ones self in that broader context which sees the whole of reality as arriving from a divine creative source. We can only really undo all of these dichotomies by some kind of liturgical enactment. One of the things I did in my book when I was analyzing secular reason is to show how the human self, by its self, is a divided self, and when it is trying to enthrone its own constructs it starts to lead an almost duplicitous existence, but the liturgical self is one which acknowledges freely its complete dependence upon another being, a divine, transcendent reality, and is so committed to that reality that it can’t admit to any kind of internal divisions or contradictions. There is something completely simple about liturgical language. It simply says, “I am nothing, and I depend upon you and I worship you, and along with that liturgical worldview comes the realization that everything around us is in the mode of gift and arrives as a gift from God. And so not only does it affect our relationship with ourself and to God himself, but also to our relationship with the world around us, and how we receive it.” — Catherine Pickstock, in an interview which one can listen to here.

“I’m very much in a tradition of Anglican thinkers going back to John Neville Figgis who have insisted that the church is the purpose of salvation, it’s not just the collection of believers or the saved. The church is the realization of salvation, because the church is the realization of reconciliation, ultimately b/t everybody. Ultimately the church is, as the Eastern Orthodox stress, bigger than the cosmos, because it’s the cosmos linked to God and returned to God. So church for me is a very big reality. It’s the site of the true human sociality. So, again, very much in the tradition of Anglican socialism I tend to see the church itself as the political vehicle. You don’t need a political party, b/c the church has a social purpose that goes beyond the political understood in the normal sense, because it’s not just about equal sharing and punishing wrongdoers. It’s about forgiveness and reconciliation and restoring and giving superabundantly to each other. So it involves some kind of social purpose that can’t be fully realized in this world but can to some extant and goes beyond the social purpose and the political purpose of the state, so much so that even ideally state functions should be minimalized in relation to ecclesiastical functions. The more we had real church in our economic practices, in our social practices … the less you would need these state functions. Liturgy also is crucial here: the sense that worshipping God is the true social purpose and that everything, all our economic activities are ultimately oriented to making the true worship of God in the kind of ritual patterns of the daily life that come to a head in what happens in a church. Without a sense of what binds us together you don’t have a real society.” — John Milbank, in an invterview which you can listen to here.

As a part of my journey into deeper catholicity, I have begun to sign the cross in worship. I had a pivotal conversation a few months ago about this with a close and knowledgeable friend, which I have been thinking much about.

In addition to it being ancient tradition, there are many theological reasons why we make the sign of the cross on our bodies at certain times during the liturgy, but I want to focus on one in particular: the participatory nature of the Christian life.

Christian theology teaches that humanity’s ultimate end is participation in the triune God of Scripture. Ultimately, this refers to Thomas’ mysterious beatific vision on the last day, in the new heavens and the new earth. And yet we begin to participate in God in this life as well, bringing the eschaton into the now.

Like the eucharistic liturgical actions performed by the priest, to make the sign of the cross on one’s body is a symbolic movement through time and in this sense it consecrates time. It is symbolically to say to God and to others not just “I want my life to be marked by the cross,” but also “My body, which is a living sacrifice, and which will be raised on the last day, and which represents the totality of my life / being, is destined for full oneness with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

In light of controversies swirling around Westminster Seminary and Pete Enn’s view of Scripture, I thought I would post this article by Alan Gregory (Professor of Historical Theology at ETSS) on Samuel Coleridge’s theological (note: not historical or critical) critique of the dominant understanding of Scripture in England in his day, that of “plenary inspiration:”

Spirit to Spirit: Coleridge on the Bible

1. Introduction

Coleridge’s Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit is a
“prophetic” work. “Prophetic” in the sense that Coleridge
offers a theological account of contemporary shifts and
tendencies to which others were blind or indifferent.
Almost alone among his contemporaries, Coleridge knew the
German historical and critical work on the Bible. What’s
more he grasped its significance, he saw that it did and it
would have far-reaching implications for understanding
Scripture and its authority. In the year he completed the
Confessions (1825) Coleridge had read Schleiermacher’s
Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke. His attitude was
far from uncritical but he appreciated that the direction
German theology was taking might offer a path beyond the
sterility of “Bibliolatry,” as he terms it.

On the other hand, Coleridge recognized that things were
changing in England, too. More subtly but still
significantly. For several decades, the doctrine of
“plenary inspiration,” the doctrine that Coleridge
describes as dictation by “an Infallible Intelligence,”
would remain largely uncontroversial. It was stoutly
defended by Van Mildert, the Bishop of Durham in 1814 and
the defense largely held until the 1860’s. Under the
surface, however, Coleridge had detected change. Change in
two important respects: firstly, there was, he thought, a
tension between what leading clerics said about Scripture
from the pulpit and the explanations some of them gave when
out of it. Coleridge has pinpointed a problem of
hermeneutic integrity in a particularly modern form. Clergy
have come to participate in what sociologists refer to as
an “expert culture,” an expert culture formed by modern
notions of science and intellectual responsibility. The
hermeneutic problem is, partly, that of all expert cultures
which involves a - sometimes seductive - “knowledge” gap
between the expert and his or her constituency. For the
clergy, that problem is sharpened as their expertise
concerns the Bible, which is the primary source of
narratives, images, symbols, exemplars, codes, and
doctrines in which people find their lives before God.
Here, therefore, the “gap” between “expert” and
constituency, threatens the integrity of the common life
and the practice of faith. The second change Coleridge
recognized was a dangerous instability in a situation in
which people, in order to maintain a particular doctrine of
biblical authority, engage in desperate mental gymnastics
that they would consider insane if applied to any book
other than the Bible.

Coleridge recognized that certain ways of defending
Christian faith had had their day and, what’s more, that
eventually, if they hadn’t already, they would become a
liability. Also - and this is vital - Coleridge argued that
the dominant doctrine of Biblical authority, together with
the assumptions behind it, were theologically unsound. That
they were corrupting of faith. If Coleridge had just
written a critique of “plenary inspiration” from a
historical-critical perspective, this would have long been
out-dated. However, he wrote a theological critique, the
positive proposals of which transcend the survival of any
“doctrine of an Infallible Intelligence.”

2. The Doctrine of an Infallible Intelligence

What view of Scripture does Coleridge attack? It might seem
as if Coleridge was setting up a “straw man” in these
lectures: did anyone really hold the views of Scripture he
attacks? Well, as for the C19th, accounts of the Bible very
much in terms of what Coleridge calls the “doctrine of an
infallible intelligence” continued not only to be held but
fiercely defended from Anglican pulpits throughout the
century. In 1861, for instance, the Vicar of St. Mary the
Virgin, Oxford – the University Church – preached a series
of sermons denouncing the, relatively conservative,
advocacy of “higher criticism” found in the liberal volume
of essays, Essays and Reviews. As one commentator put it,
he smote the “seven champions” of heresy “with the jawbone
of an ass.” Here is an extract:

The Bible is none other than “the voice of Him
that sitteth upon the Throne” Every book of it -
every chapter of it - every verse of it - every
syllable of it - (where are we to stop?) every
letter of it - is the direct utterance of the
most High! The Bible is none other than the Word
of God - not some part of it more, some part of
it less, but all alike, the utterance of Him who
sitteth upon the Throne – absolute – faultless –
unerring - supreme.

If mainstream defenses of this view are harder to find
today, it would, nevertheless, be rash to deny that we
still find attitudes to Scripture and practices of reading
it that imply, even where they don’t state, something like
the “doctrine of an infallible intelligence.” This is one
point at which Coleridge is perhaps most useful to us,
alerting us to a relationship to the Bible that is fraught
with the same spiritual and theological dangers even if it
avoids the theory.

How, then, does Coleridge describe the “doctrine of an
infallible intelligence”?

The doctrine in question requires me to believe,
that not only what finds me, but that all that
exists in the sacred volume, and which I am bound
to find therein, was-not alone inspired by, that
is, composed by men under the actuating influence
of the Holy Spirit, but likewise-dictated by an
Infallible Intelligence; - that the writers, each
and all, were divinely informed as well as
inspired. Now here all evasion, all excuse, is
cut off. An Infallible Intelligence extends to
all things, physical no less than spiritual. It
may convey the truth in any one of the three
possible languages,-that of Sense, as objects
appear to the beholder on this earth; or that of
Science, which supposes the beholder placed in
the centre; - or that of Philosophy, which
resolves both into a supersensual reality. But
whichever be chosen-and it is obvious that the
incompatibility exists only between the first and
second, both of them being indifferent and of
equal value to the third - it must be employed
consistently.

In this view, Scripture is infallible in every respect and
from whatever angle of approach - historical, scientific,
philosophical. “And… whichever of these three languages
(of sense, science, or philosophy) be chosen it must be
translatable into Truth.” That is, it must be fully
consistent with any and every other statement within the
body of Scripture and with any and every other element in
our knowledge of the world. Thus, in the case of the story
of Noah’s Flood, for instance, if we say that it possesses
theological rather than historical truth we are, in effect,
limiting the kind of truth this story may be said to
possess. It is precisely this limitation that, Coleridge
argues, the theory of “divine dictation” does not allow.
Why? Because it involves the claim that everything is
directly the speech of God. The finite, historical media -
the human writers and singers and speakers - contribute
nothing of their own finitude. Their language no longer
bears their passions, their limitations of perspective,
their particularities of their experience, their
historicity, it is entirely transparent to the divine
speech.

Coleridge spots an essential shift here. Scripture itself
has become an “object of faith” - an object of faith rather
than a source, awakener, sustainer, restorer, and companion
of faith. In Coleridge’s view, classical convictions of
Biblical authority did not involve fore-grounding beliefs
about the Bible but rather believing with and through the
Scriptures. In the position Coleridge attacks, the Bible
becomes the focus of attention rather than the subsidiary
means of attention – what we see rather than that through
which we see.

This leads to another crucial point. An “objectified”
Scripture is the creation of a falsely objectified faith.
This takes us back to the understanding of our knowledge of
God that William Law also attacked. The Deists voiced an
extreme version of a more generally held conviction that
one might grasp religious truth through the exercise of a
reason that was common to all and, therefore, free from the
disputes and controversies that had so sorely disturbed the
Church. There were, some suggested, religious truths that
were “natural” in that there were rationally convicting,
perspicuous to anyone who wasn’t mad or wicked. Such truths
were graspable, to use Coleridge’s language, “like the
objects of sense, common to all alike.” By the end of the
18th century, though, this view, though it continued to be
held and popular, most famously by William Paley, had come
under severe criticism. Both Hume and Kant had showed that
you couldn’t get away that easily from the knowing subject,
from the perspective, the point of view, the cognitive
structure of the one who is doing the knowing. Hume pointed
out, for instance, that we bring to the argument from
design the characteristics of the Christian account of God
which the argument on its own cannot sustain. More
radically still, Kant argues that our particular way of
knowing – ordering sense experience through the a priori
structuring activity of our minds – bankrupts all claims to
know any reality that is not “sensible.” We cannot escape
the structure of our knowing – we can know only things as
they appear to us, only in terms of our structure of
knowing. We, therefore, are always implicated in what we
know. There is no epistemological escape from the subject,
from ourselves as and in our knowing. Coleridge takes this
critique a stage further and in a different direction.

Coleridge, then, faces us with a choice. On the one hand,
we have a doctrine of biblical authority in which that
authority is “objectified.” In other words, the claim is
the bible is verbally inerrant and evidence can be provided
for that, at least negative evidence, that should be
accepted by all right thinking individuals irrespective of
their belief. On the other hand, we might acknowledge that
the authority of the Bible is not the sort of authority
that can be objectively demonstrated. Rather it’s an
authority that asserts itself in the process of our
committed engagement. Not only can you not escape
subjectivity but, as far as religion is concerned, you
shouldn’t want to. Subjectivity is essential to religion,
to faith. Put differently, Coleridge recognizes that
engagement is inescapable. It is the way to truth.

As far as the Bible is concerned, shoring up the doctrine
of divine dictation requires all kinds of odd maneuvers in
order to show that inconsistencies aren’t really
inconsistencies, that errors of fact are not, in fact,
wrong, and that morally offensive passages are entirely
agreeable, after all. The most familiar examples of this
kind of thing involve internal contradictions of fact and
external contradictions with, say archeological and
historical science. The doctrine of “infallible
intelligence” requires us to explain away every tension and
scurry to resolve or attack every claim of “secular”
science that seems to threaten a biblical statement. What
is going on when we do that? You’re trying to secure an
objective certainty. The authority of Scripture depends on
its infallibility being objectively demonstrated or
preserved against erosion, secured, on the one hand,
against the subjectivity of its human authors - here
reduced to passive instruments - and, on the other hand,
against the doubts and questions of its contemporary
readers. This mistaken attempt at security, however,
produces only uncertainty and restless alarm. It also has
to some dark moral consequences, suggested in his anecdote
about the morality of Jael. As a contemporary example,
consider the way in which, even in the late-C20th, the
doctrine of verbal inerrancy has reinforced and justified
anti-Semitism.

What sort of authority does Scripture possess, then? The
kind of authority that comes about through engagement,
recognized in and through a relationship. It establishes
itself Spirit to Spirit, in the experience of recognition,
an experience that changes and grows with time.

[In Scripture] I have met everywhere more or less
copious sources of truth, and power, and
purifying impulses; - that I have found words for
my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances
for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame
and my feebleness… . In short, whatever finds me,
bears witness for itself that it has proceeded
from a Holy Spirit, even from the same Spirit,
which remaining in itself, yet regenerateth all
other powers, and in all ages entering into holy
souls maketh them friends of God, and prophets.

This kind of authority is not neurotically dependent upon
freedom from any and all error, inconsistency, or lapse.
Scripture is the medium of a relationship in which truth
may be received, known, and lived. What Coleridge has done
is to re-appropriate a patristic and Reformation idea,
namely, that the Bible is “self-authenticating,” it’s
authority “self-demonstrating.” This is, in fact, an ancient
view. Coleridge’s account is distinctively modern, however,
in its psychological and historical thrust: this self-
demonstration takes place over time, as a process of trial.

There are likewise sacred Writings, which, taken
in connection with the institution and perpetuity
of a visible Church, all believers revere as the
most precious boon of God, next to Christianity
itself, and attribute both their communication
and preservation to an especial Providence. In
them you will find all the revealed truths, which
have been set forth and offered to you, clearly
and circumstantially recorded; and, in addition
to these, examples of obedience and disobedience
both in states and individuals, the lives and
actions of men eminent under each dispensation,
their sentiments, maxims, hymns, and prayers,
their affections, emotions, and conflicts;-in all
which you will recognize the influence of the
Holy Spirit, with a conviction increasing with
the growth of your own faith and spiritual
experience.

An important question, though, arises. Doesn’t
Coleridge’s strategy leave us with a merely subjective
assertion of the Bible’s authority: an emotionally
based conviction that cannot sustain itself publicly,
in any kind of argument?

Coleridge’s restoration of subjectivity against an
objectification of Scripture is a distinctively post-
Kantian one. He’s critically aware of the dangers of a
failure to recognize the subject both within and without
the text of Scripture, both, that is, the subjectivity of
the authors and that of the readers. Coleridge, of course,
pulls his radical punches in that he reserves - whether for
reasons of strategy or personal conservatism - the category
of direct “dictation.” The burden of his argument, however,
falls on the affirmation of the finite as the inevitable
medium for the knowledge of God. We do not know “things in
themselves” but things in the mode of human knowing.
Coleridge asks:

“How can I comprehend this? How is it to be proved?
To the first question, I should answer:
Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but
a Life. Not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a
living Process. To the second: TRY IT.”

3. The “Coinherence” of Subjective and Objective

It’s important to note, though, that Coleridge is not
saying “it’s true because you believe it,” or “by believing
it, you make it true.” Nor is he intending to “privatize”
Christianity: access only through the doors of an
experience vouchsafed to the few. Rather, the point is the
post-Kantian and Romantic one: subjectivity is the
inescapable medium of objective truth. Coleridge explains
it like this:

I comprise and conclude the sum of my conviction
in this one sentence. Revealed Religion (and I
know of no religion not revealed) is in its
highest contemplation the unity, that is, the
identity or coinherence, of Subjective and
Objective. It is in itself, and irrelatively, at
once inward Life and Truth, and outward Fact and
Luminary. But as all Power manifests itself in
the harmony of correspondent Opposites, each
supposing and supporting the other,- so has
Religion its objective, or historic and
ecclesiastical pole, and its subjective, or
spiritual and individual pole. In the miracles,
and miraculous parts of religion - both in the
first communication of divine truths, and in the
promulgation of the truths thus communicated - we
have the union of the two, that is, the
subjective and supernatural displayed
objectively, outwardly and phenomenally as
subjective and supernatural.

An example may clarify the last – and important – sentence.
The Risen Jesus appeared only to the disciples, only,
therefore, to those who, however broken in spirit, guilty,
disappointed, or bewildered, still stood within a structure
of concern, of interest: “we had hoped that he was the one
to redeem Israel.” Jesus did not appear to Caiphas, Pilate,
or to any passing and indifferent stranger. Does that mean
that the resurrection was “merely subjective,” just “in the
heads” of the disciples. Coleridge’s answer is no. This
risen life is God given: it is not a possibility of which
the world is capable. Only possibilities within the world
can be proved or demonstrated and resurrection simply isn’t
a this-worldly discovery. In Coleridge’s terms, it is
“supernatural.” Here, then, in the resurrection
appearances, it is disclosed objectively, that is, as an
outward truth – as “real.” The theme of doubt that also
appears in the resurrection narratives serves to reinforce
this “outwardness” – the resurrection appearances are
something unexpected, “out of the way,” and therefore
capable of provoking doubt as well as faith. Furthermore,
the mystery of resurrection is offered to the freedom of
trust, it does not overwhelm, coerce. The resurrection,
then, is given as an outward truth, not as created by the
disciples’ mental state. Yet, still, only the disciples
perceive it, it is “available,” as it were, only in and
through that movement of trust which Christ summons and to
which he addresses himself. Why? Because the deepest truth
of things is only available to the engaged, to those who
participate, give themselves in trust and hope. Even, if
that giving is tentative, fearful, and accompanied with
doubt. Thus, in Coleridge’s terms, the resurrection
appearances disclose the objectivity of resurrection as an
outwardness that can only be grasped inwardly: an
objectivity that requires subjectivity. The “identity or
coinherence of Subjective and Objective.”

Immediately after this passage, Coleridge returns to the
character of Scripture: “in the scriptures…and in the
Mind of the believing and regenerate Reader and Meditator,
there is proved the reciprocity, or reciprocation of the
Spirit as Subjective and Objective.” We are, in all this,
and Coleridge points it out, close to an ancient Christian
doctrine: that of the Holy Spirit as inspirer of author and
interpreter.

4. A Novelistic Approach to Scripture

It remains to note one distinctive element of Coleridge’s
proposals for reading Scripture. Scripture is the witness
to God’s truth given through a complex history of flesh and
blood. The Bible was fashioned within and bears innumerable
marks of cultural change; of the formation, adaptation; and
decay of institutions; of intellectual developments; of
violent breaks of historical continuity; of disagreement,
conflict, and ideological rivalry; of renewal and revision.
This is Scripture’s “historicity” and it’s this that the
“doctrine of Infallible Intelligence” obscures. Here is
Coleridge’s example:

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse
ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof - sang
Deborah. Was it that she called to mind any
personal wrongs - rapine or insult - that she or
the house of Lapidoth had received from Jabin or
Sisera? No; she had dwelt under he palm tree in
the depth of the mountain. But she was a mother
in Israel; and with a mother’s heart, and with
the vehemency of a mother’s and a patriot’s love,
she had shot the light of love from her eyes, and
poured the blessings of love from her lips, on
the people that had jeoparded their lives unto
the death against the oppressors; and the
bitterness, awakened and borne aloft by the same
love, she precipitated in curses on the selfish
and coward recreants who came not to the help of
the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the
mighty. As long as I have the image of Deborah
before my eyes, and while I throw myself back
into the age, country, circumstances, of this
Hebrew Bouduca in the not yet tamed chaos of the
spiritual creation; - as long as I contemplate
the impassioned, high-souled, heroic woman in all
the prominence and individuality of her will and
character, - I feel as if I were among the first
ferments of the great affections - the proplastic
waves of the microcosmic chaos, swelling up
against - and yet towards - the outspread wings
of the Dove that lies brooding on the troubled
waters.

There is something very interesting about this approach. It
is “novelistic.” We read and understand Deborah like we
would read and understand a character in a novel. It is no
coincidence - despite Coleridge’s own reservations about
novels - that this is the period in which the novel
develops and becomes the dominant literary form - even
poetry becomes “novelized” in the C19th, as does painting.

The Bible is unique, Coleridge tells us, but it’s not
unique because it’s infallible: it’s unique in its power to
“find” us. Coleridge asks us, therefore, to “read its
contents with only the same piety which you freely accord
on other occasions to the writings of men, considered the
best and wisest of their several ages!” This is an
important critical principle. It was to become a slogan
when historical-criticism began to make serious inroads
into the English clergy’s approach to Scripture. The idea
is, for instance, found in Benjamin Jowett’s contribution
to Essays and Reviews, the collection that so upset the
vicar of St. Mary the Virgin. However, there is a problem.
Historical criticism invites a far more reductive approach
to the biblical text than Coleridge would have
countenanced. When biblical interpretation is dominated by
historical-criticism, meaning is identified with the
results of an historian’s reconstruction of the author’s
intentions and the author’s historical context. This is
another form of false and reductive objectification.

Here, Coleridge’s doctrine of “the coinherence of
subjectivity and objectivity,” of the Spirit in authors and
readers points a way beyond reductionism. For him, meaning
is not univocal or static but arises out of the relation
the reader has with the text: the dynamism of the reader
and the reader’s context, on the one hand, with the text on
the other, a dynamism mediated in the Spirit.

“I have never found certitude easy. Beliefs grow slowly in my mind, changing shape as they gain a fresh insight, or shed what seems to be an error. It is not a process that leads naturally to a conclusion. This can be an advantage in the ordinary intercourse of life. One is better able to understand other people if one’s ideas have not yet hardened, and can be stretched without loss of integrity to accommodate theirs.

The difficulty is to know when the limits of understanding are reached. There always seems to be one more step that can be taken without danger in fellowship. Harmony is a great good, but there are others greater, for those whose sake it must be, in the last resort, renounced. I could, I hope, find the courage to die for them; but my mind still gropes in vain. It is an agonizing task to define the principles for which a man must condemn his living body to the flame.” — Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, en route to being burned at the stake.

Another thought about Westminster Seminary (my alma mater) whose publication “Westminster Today” arrived in the mail recently, which I just read.

What wonderful, rich theology, for example in the article by Vern Poythress on the relationship between biblical and systematic theology, a topic which is perpetually addressed at the seminary with near exhaustive detail.

Indeed, one can read tens of thousands of pages about this relationship, and hear scores of hours about it in lectures.

However, eight years after Westminster, I find myself asking with even more conviction than I did eight years ago, “What about liturgical theology?” What about the ancient maxim, lex orandi lex credendi, which can be rendered as “Our worship determines our theology”?

On the other hand, I don’t really expect Westminster to embrace this idea. It simply isn’t a Reformed conviction, and Reformed theology “is what it is.”

But it is very clear to me that, whatever the deep riches present at Westminster and in the grand tradition it represents — and there are many — it does not believe that theology begins in worship and is rooted there.

Perhaps if it did there would be a chapel on campus in which the sacraments are celebrated.

Bruce McCormack, professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, has commented on the text which (one subgroup of) the faculty of Westminster wrote to justify its opposition to the Christological analogy Pete Enns relies upon in his book Inspiration and Incarnation.

McCormack succinctly does a geneaology of Reformed christology, culminating in John Owen and visible in the Westminster Standards, tracing it back to Chalcedon. The upshot is that the Reformed tradition, in opposition to some patristic readings as well as most Orthodox readings, locates the personhood of Christ in the hypostatic union, and not simply as derivative from the pre-existing Logos. Interestingly, the main motivation for this on the part of the Reformed tradition was to preserve the real humanity of Christ in all its fullness, resisting the idea that Christ’s humanity is just an instrument of the Logos.

Here as elsewhere, the Reformed theological tradition rocks. What is sad, though, is that WTS, as a part of its condemnation of Pete’s book, is departing from this.

What is even sadder is that they probably did not even realize what it was doing, so low is its interest level in the patristic thought and the ancient context of Chalcedon. McCormack reminds us that doing theology is impossible apart from doing history.

Hmmmm … isn’t that also what Pete is saying (among other things) in his book?

Bad things happen when we (ie, evangelicals or conservative Reformed types) let our doctrine of Scripture drive the rest of our theology, which seems to me to be what is going on at WTS. The need nostalgically to defend (a relatively recent conception of) the Bible drives all else.

For the text of the McCormack piece, go here.

In the past I have written about Lauren Winner’s Real Sex, and I want to do so again, as part of a larger conversation.

Bouquet and I have a pair of good friends who are in their early-to-mid twenties and who are in a dating relationship which is getting “pretty serious.”

They recently approached Bouquet wanting to discuss the issue of sexuality, in particular asking the question, “Based on Christianity, is it really the case that ’sex outside of marriage’ is wrong?’”

Great question, and one that I am always asking myself, and so I want to blog about it.

I want to start with a line from CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity, specifically from Book III entitled “Christian Behavior,” and chapter 5 of that book called “Sexual Morality:” “[t]he … Christian rule is “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or abstinence.”

First off, notice that Lewis is saying that marriage and not “a wedding ceremony” is a prerequisite for sex, on the Christian view. This is an important point because nowhere in the Bible is there a clear precedent for, or a clear teaching on, a wedding ceremony. Instead, what there is clear teaching on in Scripture is something called “one flesh union.” This is what is portrayed in Genesis (Gen 2:24) and in the sexual theology of St. Paul which always has the creation narrative(s) — or as Lauren Winner puts it in her book, the original order of God’s good creation which we see in the creation stories — in view (see I Cor 6:16 for Paul’s direct quotation of Gen 2:24).

In other words, even if the the Bible does not seem to have a lot to say explicitly about wedding ceremonies, it does clearly teach that sex goes with marriage. And so the question becomes, “What is marriage?” And the answer to that question is seen as elsewhere in the two verses cited above: marriage is one flesh union.

Now what is interesting about that is the word “flesh.” For, as Winner alludes to in her book, both the Greek and the Hebrew words (sarx and bassar, respectively) for “flesh” point in two directions are the same time. The word can mean “body,” and / or it can mean something like “the holistic life of the self” or the “one’s own life in its totality.” For the former meaning see I Cor 15:39 or II Cor 7:5, and for the latter see, again, I Cor 6:16. (There is a third meaning of the word which is less important for our purposes, though it is related to this second meaning: it can refer simply to the human person or to humanity as a whole, as in Jn 17:2 and Acts 2:17, and a fourth meaning can be “the sin nature” as we see in Gal 5.)

So when the Bible portrays the man Adam and the woman as “one flesh” it is referring both to both meanings. To quote Lauren Winner:

“One-fleshness … captures an all-encompassing over-arching oneness — when they marry, husband and wife enter an institution that points them toward familial, domestic, emotional, and spiritual [one might also add: financial, psychological, and social] unity. But the one flesh of which Adam speaks [in his "love poem" in Gen 1:23] is also overtly sexual, suggesting sexual intercourse, the only physical state other than pregnancy when it is hard to tell where one person’s body stops and the other’s starts.”

What is marriage? It is a relationship of holistic unity with another person, and this includes at its center the bodily unity of sex. Because this holistic unity involves so much, because there is so much at stake — physical health, emotional health, economic health, social health, psychological health — it requires commitment.

The kind of lasting commitment one finds in biblical portrayals and descriptions of covenants. And it is here, in the need for commitment, where the actual marriage ceremony becomes a serious matter, and one which wise people will consider very seriously.

To summarize, does the Bible teach that one must get married before having sex? I am not sure if it does or not, but I know that it does teach that one must be married before having sex (although it requires this not as some abstract law, but rather as a way to protect the health or shalom of the person), and a wise person will recognize that the best way to start being married is actually to get married.

I would like to comment on the Windsor Report’s articulation of the authority of Scripture, and invite folks to comment on it.

What I find interesting about the report’s articulation of how biblical authority works out in practice is:

1. the polemical context. In light of fracturing communion caused by unilateral actions on the part of ECUSA and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster on matters potentially of great concern to member churches, the Windsor Report is reaffirming the traditional (and the report itself rehearses this tradition) Anglican basis of authority in Scripture.

2. the implied alternatives. Not only is this conception of authority different from that of the papal see, it is also different from what tends to be the case (including historically) in protestant traditions which consider themselves to be confessional or evangelical, which tend statically to spatialize Scripture, according to the report. In contrast to this latter alternative, Scripture plays a vital role in the authority of God in Jesus Christ in the mission and life of the church as it seeks to bring about the inbreaking Kingdom of God in and for the world. This, the report claims, is how the earliest Christians thought of it, and this makes sense, when it is remembered that, while the earliest Christians did not have the New Testament canon as we think of it, they did nevertheless gather in Eucharistic synaxis to be formed by the word of God (as the preaching of the Gospel) into the body of Christ, for the sake of the world. To put it another way, it seems helpful to imagine (with a historically informed imagination, of course) how the earliest Christian communities made decisions in the era prior to the canonization of what we call the New Testament.

3. the purpose of this discussion of how authority works. This point of this entire rendition of how Scripture is authoritative, however, is to locate authority not just “in the Scriptures” (as if texts can be without interpretation in any meaningful sense) but rather in the church’s interpretation of the Scriptures. That is, the entire church interprets the Scriptures authoritatively together.

I also like the report’s articulation of the dual purpose of the NT: to fulfill the story of Israel, and to found the mission and life of the church.

And now I will paste the relevant sections of the Windsor Report itself (don’t be surprised if it sounds like NTW: he is one of the primary authors!):

The bonds of communion
52. These broader considerations lead to reflection in more detail on the specific bonds which hold the Anglican Communion together. Communion, after all, does not simply happen. Even at the human level, it is not left to chance and tacit goodwill. There are several aspects of our common life which, as well as fulfilling the primary purpose of enabling the Church to fulfil its gospel mission in and for the world, serve to draw us together and hold us in fellowship.

The authority of scripture
53. Central among these is scripture. Within Anglicanism, scripture has always been recognised as the Church’s supreme authority, and as such ought to be seen as a focus and means of unity. The emphasis on scripture grew not least from the insistence of the early Anglican reformers on the importance of the Bible and the Fathers over against what they saw as illegitimate mediaeval developments; it was part of their appeal to ancient undivided Christian faith and life. The seventeenth and eighteenth century divines hammered out their foundations of “scripture, tradition and reason”; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we have seen the ‘Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral’, in which scripture takes first place.35 The Bible has always been at the centre of Anglican belief and life, embodied and exemplified by the fact that the reading and singing of scripture has always been at the centre of Anglican worship.
54. However, the common phrase “the authority of scripture” can be misleading; the confusions that result may relate to some of the divisions just noted. Scripture itself, after all, regularly speaks of God as the supreme authority. When Jesus speaks of “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28.18), he declares that this authority is given, not to the books that his followers will write, but to himself. Jesus, the living Word, is the one to whom the written Word bears witness as God’s ultimate and personal self-expression. The New Testament is full of similar ascriptions of authority to the Father, to Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. Thus the phrase “the authority of scripture”, if it is to be based on what scripture itself says, must be regarded as a shorthand, and a potentially misleading one at that, for the longer and more complex notion of “the authority of the triune God, exercised through scripture”. The question of how this exercised through’ works in practice is vital to understanding the kind of authority which scripture possesses and hence to the nature and exercise of actual authority within the Church. It may be, historically, that the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ has characteristically emerged in contexts of protest (when one part of the Church appeals to scripture against something being done by another part). When we attempt to apply it more widely, to an entire understanding of the Church’s mission and common life, it quickly becomes apparent that its implications need to be thought out more fully.
55. For Jesus and the early Christians, ‘authority’ was not conceived as a static source of information or the giving of orders (as the word ‘authority’ has sometimes implied), but in terms of the dynamic inbreaking of God’s kingdom, that is, God’s sovereign, saving, redeeming and reconciling rule over all creation. This saving rule of God, long promised and awaited in Israel, broke in upon the world in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection, to be then implemented through the work of the Spirit until the final act of grace which will create the promised new heavens and new earth. If the notion of scriptural authority is itself to be rooted in scripture, and to be consonant with the central truths confessed by Christians from the earliest days, it must be seen that the purpose of scripture is not simply to supply true information, nor just to prescribe in matters of belief and conduct, nor merely to act as a court of appeal, but to be part of the dynamic life of the Spirit through which God the Father is making the victory which was won by Jesus’ death and resurrection operative within the world and in and through human beings. Scripture is thus part of the means by which God directs the Church in its mission, energises it for that task,
and shapes and unites it so that it may be both equipped for this work and itself part of the message.
56. How then does scripture function in this way? This is not the place for a detailed consideration of the respective authority of the Old and New Testaments, important though that discussion is. The early Christians understood themselves to be both beneficiaries and agents of the saving sovereignty of God, the ‘kingdom’ which had been accomplished in Jesus Christ. The ‘authority’ of the
apostles – a concept worked out with great pain and paradox by Paul in 2 Corinthians – was their God-given and Spirit-driven vocation as witnesses of the resurrection, through whose announcement of the good news God was powerfully at work to call men and women to salvation (Romans 1.16-17) and thus to create the Church as the sign and foretaste of new creation (Ephesians 1-3). It is within this context of apostolic witness, drawing its ‘authority’ from the victory of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit (Matthew 28.18-20; 2 Corinthians 3.1-4.6, 13.3-4), that the writings we call the New Testament came to be written, precisely to be vehicles of the Spirit’s work in energising the Church in its mission and shaping it in the holiness of new creation. Thus, as scholarship has emphasised, the writers of the canonical gospels (despite all the obvious differences between them, and the multiple sources upon which they drew) were conscious of telling the story of Jesus in such a way as to demonstrate its fulfilment of the story of Israel and its foundational character for the mission and life of the Church. From the first, the New Testament was intended as, and perceived to be, not a repository of various suggestions for developing one’s private spirituality, but as the collection of books through which the Spirit who was working so powerfully through the apostles would develop and continue that work in the churches. This is why, from very early in
the Church, the apostolic writings were read during worship, as part of both the Church’s praise to God for his mighty acts and of the Church’s drawing fresh strength from God for mission and holiness. This, rather than a quasi-legal shorthand phrase “authority of scripture” finds its deepest meaning.”

In navigating the waters between Presbyterianism and Anglicanism, I have come to see that one watershed divide between the liturgical churches of the “great tradition” and more Reformational churches is the issue of whether the church is the continued incarnation of Christ on the earth.

I have come to land on the side of the issue that does affirm that this claim is an true characteristic of the church, that the church is incarnational in this way.

I offer below two patristic quotations (thanks to Doug Harrison) which testify to ancient precedent in seeing the church in this way. The first is from St. Augustine:

“The Body of Christ,” you are told, and you answer, “Amen.” Be members then of the Body of Christ that your Amen may be true. Why is this mystery accomplished with bread? We shall say nothing of our own about it, rather let us hear the Apostle, who speaking of the sacrament says: “We being many are one body, one bread.” Understand and rejoice. Unity, devotion, and charity! One bread: and what is this one bread? One body made up of many. Consider that the bread is not made of one grain alone, but of many. During the time of exorcism, your were, so to say, in the mill. At baptism you
were wetted with water. Then the Holy Spirit came into like the fire which bakes the dough. Be then what you see and receive what you are. — St. Augustine, Sermon 272 (quoted in Henri de Lubac Catholicism, p 37 - 38).

The second is from chapter 9 of the Didache (which I recently saw dated at 100CE!):

Now about the Eucharist: This is how you are to give thanks: First in connection with the cup. “We thank you, our Father, for the holy vine of David, your child. To you be glory
forever.” Then in connection with the piece [of consecrated bread], “We thank you our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have revealed through Jesus, your child. To you be glory forever. “As this piece was scattered over the hills and then was brought together and made one, so let your Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For yours is the power and the glory through Jesus Christ forever.”

What’s more, I have learned in my studies of Anglican ecclesiology that seeing the church as the incarnation of Christ on earth actually presupposes much of what the ancient fathers & mothers of the church have to say about deification (or what Anglicans sometimes refer to as holiness).