But the shortcomings of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer point up what I believe is American Anglicanism’s greatest weakness — its theological vapidity. I am not an Anglican because of the lovely worship or our sacramental life, or any of the various pieces of adiaphora that so many of us enjoy. I am first and foremost an Anglican because of its doctrinal and theological tradition.
I don’t know how many times I have heard it said outright or implied in my years here that theology doesn’t really matter or Anglicanism is not confessional. I’m sorry, that is just plain wrong: Anglicanism from the 16th Century onward has taken doctrine seriously and is has always had a strong confessional tone. Because so many have come to believe this flaccid approach to theology and the revealed truth, in recent years we have been reaping the whirlwind of the wind that for several generations has been being sown. I think this has been one of my greatest causes of grief.
What startled me when I first came here was that I was pilloried by some because of my theology, and then immediately judged not on the basis of what I believed but on my stance in relation to what was the issue du jour. In those days it was women’s ordination, which most of the time was approached not as the theological issue that it truly is, but as an issue of human right. Very early on I realized that not only did many leaders not really know the Scriptures very well, or be particularly interested in growing in their Scriptures, but they did not see that as a problem. Added to that was a very limited understanding of those generations of Christian shoulders on which we as people of this time stand.
It was when I started traveling around the church that I got to visit the seminaries that I started to discover how they functioned and what they perceived their role to be. Also, for a decade I happened to be officed in a seminaries so could see what happened there first hand. Gradually it dawned on me that my understanding of the nature of theological education was not what was going on in most of these places. There was little laying a firm foundation in Scripture, classic theology, philosophy, church history, and so forth, thereby equipping the next generation of ordained leaders for pastoral and missional ministry, but was more about propagandizing the student body into seeing life, ministry, and God in a particular culturally-conditioned kind of way.
In these seminary settings some students rebel, a few are capable of cutting their theological and intellectual teeth in a constructive manner, but significant numbers swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker, and in the process often seemed to lose their first rich passionate love of the Lord Jesus Christ. A significant element of this prevailing seminary process is that it is predicated upon a hermeneutic of suspicion when handling the Scriptures, coupled with a sense of disdain for the wisdom of those who have journeyed the Christian way before us, and the notion that we now know better. When coupled with the desperate shortcomings of the Commission on Ministry system in most dioceses it is not difficult to see why leaders cannot lead, and the faith is not growing and blossoming as it ought.
Today’s theological confusion is the end product of decades of such conditioning. Perhaps the classic example of our church’s theological vacuity was the statement that came out of the House of Bishops in March: a mishmash of inadequate theology coupled with such a spin being put on history that the facts could not sustain. It was a classic example of wanting things to go a particular way, and so tinkering with events, movements, and theology so that it was possible to justify what was desired by the majority.
Excellent peice by Fr. Kew. Indeed, read it all.
#1. I most certainly agree, especially “read it all.”
Bp. NT Wright has been my religious hero since I met him a couple of years ago. Regretfully, I probably will never meet Fr. Kew to also have my spirit refreshed. I do hope to follow him in his new ministry at Cambridge. We pilgrims need to hear such as this.
Mark Twain said: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” In like manner, to speak of vacuous theology is almost to repeat one’s self. Essentially all theology is vacuous, in the sense that it’s built on uncorroboratable historical claims and unverifiable conjecture.
D.C, what is your existential purpose in repeatedly making arguments that rely solely upon a total rejection of that which almost everyone else here holds as foundational for any discusion of anything substantial?
Is it just your trollish crankiness that impels you?
Oh, but I did appreciate the Twain quote.
Christopher Hathaway, if Fr. Kew chooses to attack the 1979 BCP on grounds of theological vacuity, he needs to remember he lives in an epistemological glass house; that he and others might regard their own theology as “foundational” doesn’t immunize it from critical scrutiny.
(Incidentally, I always welcome critical scrutiny of my own views; I’d much rather learn from well-placed criticism — as distinct from reflexive incantation of unexamined dogma — than continue to labor under a misunderstanding.)
I’ve long liked that particular Twain quote myself, even though it unfairly maligns individual congresspeople; it’s when they get together as a group that their actions sometimes mystify me — except that all is explained by the Second Law of Politics that I read somewhere years ago: A politician’s most important duty is to get re-elected. (The First Law, glad you asked, is that the Second Law takes precedence over any and all others.)
D.C. If you’re going to make a criticism you might try making an argument. Merely accusing his theology of being vacuous is not an argument. It really falls under the definition of a “So’s your mother” type of statement.
What is there to critique in that except that you make no logical points worth considering?
Let me just point out that I shouldn’t write things if I was not prepared to receive and respond to critical scrutiny. However, what I hear is criticism, not scrutiny from D.C. His own statement suggests what might be called a jaundiced understanding of the integrity of historic fact, doctrine, and ideas, and perhaps he needs to fill that out as he makes his response to what I wrote.
My observation of theology in many parts of the Episcopal Church is that it is seldom rooted and grounded in a willingness to know and grapple with the substance of Scripture, the broad array of scholarship dealing with Scripture, systematic and historical theology in the fullest sense of these disciplines. Rather, much more credence than is appropriate is given to personal experience and opinion that has not been tested against the essence of the faith as it has been received.
Richard Kew [#8], some of the positions taken by some of the “liberals” are indeed just as much ipse dixit as some of the positions taken by some of the traditionalists.
You speak of “a willingness to know and grapple with the substance of Scripture, the broad array of scholarship dealing with Scripture, systematic and historical theology in the fullest sense of these disciplines.” It appears you’re one of those who elevates Scripture, and specifically the New Testament, as the preemptive authority in matters of faith, morals, and ecclesiastical government. From what I’ve seen however, this view has two grievous flaws:
The first flaw in this exalted view of Scripture is that it fails to explain, in a satisfying manner, why the NT writings are supposedly entitled to preemptive authority, but other canonized collections of sacred writings are not — for example the Qur’an and the hadith; the Tripitaka of Buddhism; or for that matter Torah alone.
The second flaw in this view is related to the first. The usual defense of the NT’s special status relies on claims about “on the ground” historical events that supposedly happened as recounted in the NT documents. But a study of the documents themselves shows material inconsistencies in their accounts. For example:
1. If the early chapters of Matthew and Luke were accurate, we’d expect that John the Baptist, not to mention Jesus’ parents and siblings, would have been much, much more involved in the Teacher’s earthly ministry.
2. On Easter Sunday and afterwards, the disciples certainly didn’t act like Jesus had foretold his quick resurrection. The disciples might have been uneducated [Acts 4.13], but we have no reason to assume they were dumb. It’s impossible to imagine how they could have failed to understand Jesus’s simple, repeated prediction: They’re going to kill me, but on the third day I’ll be raised back to life.
(The logical implication is that Jesus might well have predicted that he’d be executed, and even that he’d be raised as part of a general resurrection in the last days, but not that he’d be raised almost immediately after his death. That might have been what shocked the disciples: the notion that the last days were [supposedly] upon them.)
3. If we’re to believe Acts, then —
(a) Peter, preaching at Pentecost, baldly misrepresented Psalm 16.8-11: according to Acts, Peter claimed that David was writing about Jesus, but the psalm is self-evidently an an expression of confidence that God will protect the author himself, not his descendant nor any other third party. Either Peter mischaracterized the scriptural authority on which he purported to rely, or Acts got the story wrong. Neither possibility is good news for the traditionalist position;
(b) The apostles’ earliest teaching didn’t seem to include the notion that Jesus was God himself (they likely wouldn’t have survived long if they had preached that), but rather that Jesus was the long-awaited maschiach;
(c) The apostles apparently ignored Jesus’ purported instructions, quoted in Matthew, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: According to Acts, they baptized in the name of Jesus alone — that is, when they are reported as having baptized in the name of anyone at all. Again, either Acts got the story wrong, or baptism in the name of the Trinity was a later development in the church; which of course raises questions what other accounts in Matthew and the other gospels might have been “spun” to fit the later-evolving beliefs and practices of the church.
4. Mystifyingly, many of Jesus’s most influential friends and followers don’t seem to have “signed on” with the early church. We hear nothing of people whom we’d expect to be at least mentioned as participating in the church — some of whom owed Jesus big time — such as:
(a) Jesus’ wealthy friend Lazarus; whom Jesus loved; at whose death Jesus wept; whom Jesus restored to life [Jn 11]; with whom Jesus dined just before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Jn 12];
(b) the royal official in Capernauam whose son was ill [Jn 4.46-54];
(c) Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, whose twelve-year-old daughter Jesus declared was not dead but sleeping [Mt 9.18-25, Mk 5.22-23, 35-42];
(d) Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea;
(e) Joanna, wife of Herod’s household manager.
Some traditionalists respond that these people were no doubt secret Christians. But if we’re to believe Acts, there would have been little reason for them to remain closeted as secret disciples after “the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith” [Acts 6.7].
5. The early church claimed that they were living in the last days, and that Jesus would imminently return to usher in God’s reign. That prediction was a flat-out failure, about which the apostles grew increasingly defensive in some of their later writings.
—————
The Jesus of whom we read in the New Testament documents is worthy of being followed for two reasons:
• He hit the nail on the head in emphasizing the Summary of the Law, which seems to be part of the fundamental fabric of the universe; and
• he was faithful to the Creator and to his friends, even unto death.
There’s no need to sacralize the accounts of his life and its aftermath. Nor is there any warrant to make those accounts the standard by which all matters of faith and morals must be judged.
Three reasons:
He was and is God incarnate.