This last point suggests a further implication of the basic argument. The Anglican legacy includes a tradition of working with the grain of a culture: it begins in the unashamed attempt to devise a form for Catholic ecclesial life that is thoroughly ”˜native’ to the realms governed by the Tudor dynasty. Hooker is consistently concerned to defend an ecclesiastical polity that is bound up with the laws and customs of this particular society. This can be ”“ and often has been ”“ an excuse for the odd cultural fundamentalism which assumes that communicating Christianity means communicating (or imposing) certain cultural habits; it is the familiar caricature of Anglicanism abroad which has produced replicas of Gothic churches in tropical climates and a musical repertoire mostly focused upon translations of Victorian hymns. But the principle with which Hooker worked is logically one that allows cultural diversity and flexibility. At least some Anglican missions took this fully on board ”“ notably in the Pacific, when we think of the work of Selwyn and Patteson. And, to push it a little further and to link it with the reflections of Vincent Donovan in his classic, Christianity Rediscovered, this means that we should be careful of trying to control too tightly the forms that arise in response to the sharing of the Gospel.
Thus, even if a dialogue has within it a hope and prayer that it may open the door to some kind of explicit acknowledgement of Christ, it must recognize that this will not dissolve all the ”˜otherness’ that a dialogue will have involved. Just as we wait to hear what Christ has to say to us in the voice of the dialogue partner who has no explicit vocabulary for speaking of the relation that already exists with this Christ, so we wait to see what particular effect, within this thought world, this set of customs, words about Christ may have. And whatever the outcome in respect of this, the readiness to hear and learn from the ”˜stranger’s’ hidden relation to Christ must be always to the fore. I don’t think this is an appeal to an anonymous Christianity in the other: it is rather an appeal to the hidden Christ active in the other, the eternal Word who cannot but be acting in union with the historical Jesus.
To repeat the Christological point: although the Word is never without Jesus, and the Word’s acts in human history (and indeed in the universe) will be inseparable from the agency of Jesus as a human being, it would be a mistake to say that what we can say about the human Jesus exhausts what we can say about the Word.
Some while back, encouraged by a friend, I started taking an interest in Christian meditation – and in particular the exercise which has been taking hold in the Anglican church, as it seemed to accord with where my prayer-life was going. This is an esoteric development pioneered mainly by Catholics recently but now more of an ecumenical movement developed by Bede Griffiths, Laurence Freeman, John Main and others. Rowan Williams is heavily involved and has written on an early forerunner, Thomas Merton. He is also Patron of one of the organisations which promotes this in the Anglican Church.
Well, all went swimmingly, until I went to a lecture by a Benedictine Monk central to the movement who lives on a ‘Christian Ashram’ in India. He let the cat out of the bag under some astute questionning from the audience. Central to the thinking is that all the ancient traditions have meditation – the eastern religions, and the Christian church from the Orthodox to the Catholics. Deeper in, the experience in our church uses the scriptures to meditate upon, but the techniques of emptying, focusing and so on are indistinguishable from those of the Eastern religions. Our ‘Benedictine monk’ did finally admit that Christianity and Jesus was seen as just one branch of the great tree of world religions, along with Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and so on, revealing, just as the many names of gods in other religions, aspects of the One God/s who expresses himself or themselves in different ways. Hinduism has no problem with Jesus, he is just one aspect of their pantheon of expressions of god/s
I was deeply shocked, and my friend was embarrassed, but I am grateful for the clarity which I gained that evening.
Pope Benedict has specifically warned against the dangers of using non-Christian practices in meditation and as far as I can see he is spot on. My meditation and prayer no longer has anything to do with this heretical movement.
What does this have to do with Rowan Williams? Well I have been reading with rising concern his recent pronouncements. Consider his Diwali message in October:
[blockquote]In Hindu and Christian mystical texts different passages speak of homecoming as a matter of communion and relationship with God, while others present it as a luminous experience in which God and Self merge into one. I hope that through reading these different passages together in Hindu and Christian dialogue we can find a basis from which to work together as communities and develop greater understanding of the nature of God and of what it means to dwell with and in him. [/blockquote]
So, according to the ‘Archbishop’ we can learn more about God by reading the Hindu scriptures?
There is more – in November in his address launching the Hindu Christian Forum he is candid:
[blockquote]I thought I might begin by saying a word about my own history of encounter with the Hindu world which began I think when I was about 12 years old. I picked up in the school library a children’s version of the Ramayana, and began to understand that there was a very considerable world out there of which I’d known nothing, full of beauty and challenge and terror and complexity and death. And from that moment in the early 1960s, when I had my first very superficial encounter, my interest remained strong and my appetite remained strong for learning what this other world might have to teach. Later on in my teens I began to read some of the work of that unusual and controversial Roman Catholic writer, Bede Griffiths, who of course spent so many years in South India – controversial, I think, both in the Hindu and the Christian context, for his efforts to build bridges. And it was later on as a student that I encountered yet another boundary-crossing Roman Catholic figure in the shape of Abhishiktananda, whose book on prayer was to me one of the most influential works I had ever read, drawing as it did on the very deep resources of the Hindu spirituality that this French monk had drawn from in his long witness in India.[/blockquote]
Where does this lead Williams?
[blockquote]I used the opportunity of studying as much as I could of the religious world in which my wife’s family had worked for many years, and again finding my own understanding and horizons enlarge all the time.
In other words part of my own encounter with the Hindu world has been an encounter in which I have constantly realised that the historic Christian identity is something that constantly needs to be opened, enlarged, challenged and enriched in conversation.
[/blockquote]
Reading the rest of the piece it is clear that Williams draws no distinction between the insights to be drawn from the god who Hindus worship and the God who Christians worship – for him they appear from his writings to be one and the same.
Again, that resonates with a conversation I had with another individual who had asked Williams long before he became Archbishop whether Christ was the only way to God the Father. Williams reportedly told this man that he did not accept that Christianity had an exclusive claim to knowledge of God – one could get there through other religions.
So we come to this piece and where for its prolixity and tortuously careful attempts to ground itself in scripture and the Church fathers it is going:
[blockquote]Our vision of and faith in Jesus depends on the fact that the eternal Word is ontologically prior to the human individuality of Jesus, that the relation between the humanity of Jesus and the eternal Word is asymmetrical. Jesus depends on the Word. This does not mean that anyone comes into relation to the Word without coming into relation with Jesus; but it may mean that the freedom of the Word to develop relation with any human subject or human culture is not immediately limited by the contingent facts about how much that subject or culture knows or thinks it knows about Jesus of Nazareth.[/blockquote]
Quite – Archbishop Williams has wandered off exploring – past Rome, through Moscow and perhaps Constantinople and like Alexander has landed up in India. He has left us in the Church far behind.
Like his forerunner who wandered away from Christ, Richard Holloway, we should pray for him as for all those in leadership, for “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” [1Peter 5:8] His attack is sometimes subtle and preys to our weaknesses, our arrogance, our intellectual curiosity, our desire to accept everybody; he particularly likes our leaders, and those who do not ground themselves in the ‘Word’ as we have been given it in the Christian scriptures are particularly at risk.
Thanks, Pageantmaster.
Very helpful background, and rather alarming. I’m no expert on ++RW’s theology, but I note that you didn’t even mention ++RW’s whole Druid connection thing, which only adds fuel to the fire.
Alas, we Anglicans need to practice “interfaith dialogue” among ourselves, since unfortunately some Anglicans aren’t even Christians. Sad, but true.
But hey, I’ve been taking a lot of flak lately for my often verbose and rambling posts. I’m glad to see someone else posting something as long as some of my seemingly endless posts are (wink).
David Handy+
#2 Rev Handy
Yes, it is rather long, and I do try to break things up with paragraphs and numbered points but have been remiss today. Btw – I don’t mention druids much in connection with the Swami these days. But yes, his direction is extremely worrying, and when things are very serious, as this matter is, I will usually deal with it straight down the line and matter of fact.
[blockquote]I’ve been taking a lot of flak lately for my often verbose and rambling posts.[/blockquote]
Not here, my friend, and I apologise if I have had a bit of fun with them in the past – perhaps I have caught it off you? I am enjoying your educational posts – it is great to see you commenting again after your blog sabatical.
Ah, more “bait and switch” in the name of “intellectual curiosity” and alleged brain development.
Pageantmaster, thank you for the lesson/anecdotes. It’s also the TEC way–and, if you don’t sign on, the passive-aggressive implications are, “Oh, you must not be smart”. Or, “You must not be “inclusive”. Or, “You just don’t get it”.
No, I do; as many others do. I have no problem with compare/contrast of various faiths. But I am an Anglican Christian, and believe Christ to be the only path to God. If ++Williams wants to write things as above, is he Christian or striving to be a member of the Baha’i faith? Nothing wrong with the latter, but call it what it is.
And, Dr. Handy, you can wax philosophic with that PhD education any time you like, no matter how long the post. I like BOTH your posts…Thanks for them and your witness.
🙂
BW
PM (#3) and BW (#4),
Thanks for the kind words. Naturally, I was teasing you, PM. We seem to have a sort of mutual admiration society going here, so I won’t get maudlin, but I often find your posts educational too. It really helps to have folks like you from the other side of “the Pond” contributing to this blog.
David Handy+
Oh, please don’t do the “druid” thing. It was an academic society, for Pete’s sake. That would be like saying those of us who were in sororities at university (and, yes, I plead “guilty”) were pagans and priestesses. We weren’t.
The RC crowd also decries yoga as Satanic. Sorry, but it helps my bursitis, I lost 2 inches off my waistline and I am able to move easier, with less pain. Honest, I didn’t collude with the Dark One to achieve such benefits and I’m not meditating on Isis.
The ABC has many shortcomings but I don’t believe for one minute that he’s anything but a devoted Christian. Why must humans demonize those they don’t agree with instead of just engaging with the tangible differences? I don’t understand it. I’m seeing something similar going on with the local Occupy folks. It’s not enough to confront the very real problems, but they must also expound upon conspiracy theories. Oy vey …
I think this is right and Scriptural. We can say about the Word that he was in the beginning. We can’t say that about Jesus. He was born in the time of Herod. Though of course Jesus is the Word, in that he is one person, the eternal Word, who assumes human nature in Jesus Christ.
Yet the ABC’s reflections seem a great distance from the urgent demand to understand, trust and respond to who Jesus is, that one repeatedly encounters in the NT. Indeed the heavy lifting seems to be done in the piece by an understanding of an ethics of “dialogue” – that is surprisingly abstracted from particularity of the narrative of Scripture.
If one were to put things crudely – as the ABC never does – his view seems to be that salvation is through the Word who is inseperably united to Jesus – but that the Word may be active (in bringing mortals to the Father) even where he is not said to be trusted or loved.
Not so much anonymous christians as anonymous Christ.