In response to the criticism directed at her General Convention Opening Address, Katharine Jefferts Schori has published an explanation of what she said. “Apparently I wasn’t clear”. Whether her explanation clarifies what she originally said, or obsfuscates it, is a question that different people will answer in different ways. Some will think that this what she meant all along. Others will wonder whether she has not snatched up the fig leaf of orthodoxy to cover up her heterodox teaching.
What she meant to say, she now says, is that “we give evidence of our relationship with God in how we treat our neighbors, nearby and far away. Salvation is a gift from God, not something we can earn by our works, but neither is salvation assured by words alone.” That’s unexceptionable so far as it goes. Doubts, however, remain, and not inconsequential ones. Classical Anglican doctrine could not have talked about good works as she does (at length) without clarifying their relationship with individual faith (see the Articles of Religion XI-XIV). It insisted that there is no right relationship (justification) of the individual with God without faith, and that there are no good works of neighbourly love without individual faith either. Without faith, our good works turn into Pelagian works-righteousness – which do not restore us to right relationship with our neighbour, or to God. Yet Jefferts Schori can only repeat her negative account of individualism, and on the relation of faith to justification and good works she is strikingly silent. She disclaims Pelagian works-righteousness ”“ “salvation is a gift of God” ”“ but given that she cannot say how that grace operates through the faith of the individual, there is nothing in her theology to prevent a collapse into it. She can issue a further clarification, if she wishes, explaining that she is in favour of justifying faith too (though this would involve backtracking on her “individualism is heresy” theme): but the lacuna is troubling. If you are striving to assure critics of your doctrinal orthodoxy, how do you ”˜overlook’ faith?
Moreover, classical Anglicanism would also have said that faith has a doctrinal content. Schori seems unable to speak of doctrine in positive terms ”“ only the comment about the insufficiency of “words alone”. Even her doctrinal affirmations have an oddly tentative ring. “We anticipate the restoration of all creation to right relationship, and we proclaim that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection made that possible in a new way.” Does this mean that restoration was possible in another way? Or that it is only a possibility? And just how does “Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection” make this possible? We can read a classical account of the atonement into that phrase, but we have no reason to do so. Many do not. Perhaps she is once more being “unclear”? She concludes with another unimpeachable platitude, that salvation “is a mystery. It’s hard to pin down or talk about.” That’s a cheap exit. The Biblical concept of “mystery” does not mean “vague” or “ambiguous”.
As an effort to set to rest the doctrinal anxieties of her critics, Ms. Jefferts Schori’s response is remarkably ineffective. It leaves us with a choice of conclusions: either she is not capable of the requisite theological clarity, or she really does not want to be clear. Given a bishop’s role as teacher of the faith and focus of unity, neither conclusion is re-assuring.
–The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector, Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia
Everyone knows what she said, she couldn’t have been any clearer. This TEC penchant for trying to go back and spin the decisions that they make and things that they say is beyond insulting. Just be accountable for your actions and standup for your beliefs.
[blockquote]“Apparently I wasn’t clearâ€.[/blockquote]
The heart of the problem is, I believe, that it is not difficult to be clear in the first place. She is the national leader of a denomination; people pay attention, granted at their peril, to her statements. Many of her statements came in prepared speeches. I believe that was the context when she stated (I’m paraphrasing here, not quoting) that we are saved when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked or comfort the sick but she did not note that these must be done through faith in Jesus Christ. One can only assume that her content is well thought through the first time and she means what she says.
She has a PhD for goodness sake (yes…I know), she had to defend her dissertation. I’m sorry, but she really gets only one shot to make herself understood.
One of the best books on my shelves is William Zinsser’s [sp?] “On Writing Well.” In it, he observes that one can use language to communicate meaning, or to hide it. He urges his readers (as he urged his students) to the former. I suspect KJS tends to the latter.
It is not unlike the example of President Obama’s backpedalling on the Henry Louis Gates issue, or our newest S.Ct. justice on her “wise Latina” comments. Caught saying what they really think, and finding it controversial, they claim that they were not clear, or that they were misunderstood. We shouldn’t believe them. The Presiding Bishop of ECUSA, the President of the United States and a Judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals should all be expected to be able to articulate clear and comprehensible public remarks. We should all reject subsequent claims by them, and those in other prominent positions, that they really didn’t know how to write and speak so as to transmit their actual thinking.
Funny what you get drawn in to. I weighed in on this one back at the initial ENS article.
Classical Anglicanism is a product of the reformation. It is also a product of a revival of patristic studies and a renewed appreciation for Orthodoxy — witness, at the very least, Jeremy Taylor. My point is that I’m not sure it’s most helpful to parse all this in terms of justification by faith vs. works. If “the words” derisively dismissed by KJS are the words of the creed (and, within Anglicanism, what other words would be relevant?), then they are precisely words confessing the mission of God in Christ, a mystery that both transcends understanding and is life. The creed transcends the petty obfuscation of dismissing salvation as individualistic v. works as corporate. The whole life of the church in its members is the [i]missio dei[/i], which surely includes its worship, prayer, and study — not to mention the fruitful transformation of its members in Christ. To measure the whole thing by a utilitarian calculus (which, in effect, is what KJS is doing) is, in itself, heresy.