This elf is thinking we might need a scorecard soon to keep track of who has written what to whom… 😉 But all kidding aside, ACI has posted Dr. Turner’s rebuttal to Dr. Noll’s letter to him.
A REPLY BY PHILIP TURNER TO STEPHEN NOLL’S REPLY TO PHILIP TURNER
Written by Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Monday, 06 August 2007Dear Stephen,
Thank you for your gracious reply to my response to your open letter calling for a “full and final separation” between those whom you term a “faithful remnant” and The Episcopal Church (TEC). Knowing you as I do I was certain there would be a reply, but I nonetheless hoped against hope that none would be forthcoming. I say this not because I am not open to theological exchange, but because the medium (blogs) now used for such exchanges encourages hasty and ill tempered response and counter response. I have no desire to be involved in such a back and forth and I presume you do not either.
It is this observation that leads to my first response to your response. You and others have questioned my reluctance to use the word “heretic” to refer to those we jointly oppose. I have no desire to enter into an argument about the correct use of the terms “apostate” (which you did not use) and “heretic”(which you do). I believe that my observation that these terms are not being accurately applied is correct. However, my major concern was and is not their correct meaning. Rather, my concern is the way in which they are being used in our present conflict. Both terms are used (more often than not) in anger simply to dismiss those with whom one disagrees. My point concerns a culture of anger, condemnation, and dismissal that makes it unnecessary to address one’s opponent as a brother or sister who has gone astray or as a false teacher who needs correction. Rather, the terms are used to reduce one’s adversaries to a category-one that places them among “outsiders” about whom one’s spirit need not be in agony until Christ be adequately formed in them. So my first hope remains that you might join me in cautioning those who share our view of the sad state of TEC that we, the critics of TEC, stand in grave danger of misreading our circumstances because so many of us have been taken over by one of the seven deadly sins. We cannot possibly hope that God’s agents for reform and renewal will be those who themselves suffer from such a serious spiritual disease.
Here are the background links:
Noll’s response to Turner (posted Aug 3)
Turner’s response to Noll’s open letter (posted Aug 2)
Noll’s Open Letter to Network bishops (posted Jul 29)
Fr. Matt Kennedy has weighed in to specifically address Turner’s comments about the use of the word “heretic” with his feature at Stand Firm: A Brief Note on the Use of the Word “Heretic”
Also related to this debate, over at Stand Firm, Dr. Noll posted a response to Sarah Hey’s recent essay (which Kendall linked here).
And just so the links are handy, the long thread (270 comments) on Dr. Radner’s resignation from the Network is here. (Stand Firm posted Dr. Radner’s T19 comment on the ensuing discussion as a separate thread here. Note also Stand Firm’s post of Dean Munday’s response to Radner, which I don’t believe Kendall posted here.)
This is Nolls’ re-response to the above noted as a “comment” on SF.
A QUICK REPLY TO PHILIP TURNER
Dear Philip,
Thank you for your reply to my reply (maybe we’ll have to start numbering these things). I am not surprised by its irenic tone, and I am glad you recognize the same spirit in which I write. I want to take this chance to post a quick “ri-post†if I may coin an old word for a new medium.
Let me address your main point that conservatives have reacted emotionally and pragmatically rather than theologically in their handling of the crisis in the Anglican Communion. To be sure, the Episcopal Church USA has been something of a theological desert for many years. Name a major American Anglican theologian – ever! Perhaps this is a feature of our “prayer shapes believing†heritage, but I do not think it is anything to boast of. Within my own Evangelical tradition, it is probably the case that we are johnny-come-lately’s on the American scene. The founding of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, of which I was a part, was a huge effort and sometimes distracted our mental energies from the issues of the day, which were roiling the waters of TEC.
However, I will make a small claim to have tried to address these issues of the day theologically. In a series of writings beginning in 1987, I have tried to address the overall theological scene in the Episcopal Church, from inclusive language (1987), to biblical interpretation (1992), to sexuality (1997), and to the ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion (1997 to the present). Since I had trouble getting many of these writings published in hard copy, I have now posted many of them on a website (http://www.stephenswitness.com). The most complete theological treatment I made of the sexuality issue was Two Sexes, One Flesh: Why the Church Cannot Bless Same-Sex Marriage (1997). This attempt at theological dialogue garnered exactly two replies over the years, both of them over-the-top attacks rather than dialogues.
As for an attempt to articulate a “faithful remnant†ecclesiology, I argued in my essay “Broken Communion†(1999) that orthodox bishops should publicly declare themselves in a state of broken Communion with those who openly advocated and practiced ordination of homosexuals and same-sex blessings – without leaving the Church. Exactly two retired bishops took that course, leaving it to a significant number of Anglican primates and Provinces to do so.
Similarly, I have tried to make a case for a clear, strong theologically-focused Anglican Communion Covenant in my essays “The Global Anglican Covenant†(2006) and “An Evangelical Critique of the Draft Anglican Covenantâ€(2007). In both of these articles, it is exactly a theological shape for the Covenant that I am calling for. While the latter essay has been respectfully circulated at the ACI Conference in Oxford in July of this year, I have not received any substantive comments on it and I have no confidence, given the diverse group on the Drafting Committee, that it will see the light of day.
I think you are not quite clear in saying that you are not suggesting a moral equivalence between the two positions of Bishop Duncan and PB Schori. In your Oxford paper, you state that both of these positions are “dead wrong.†In any case, I think you need to be morally un-equivalent. Bishop Duncan in his public teaching and writing has said nothing that is contrary to the biblical and historical faith of the church. Just as surely PB Schori has. Where you differ from Bishop Duncan and some of us seems to be on ecclesiology, and that is relevant to the current crisis, but it is hardly the heart of the Gospel or theology.
This brings me to the practical situation in which we find ourselves, and I think my position is informed by faith, hope and charity. I want to see the day when you and the ACI can sit down with the leaders and theologians sometimes called “federal conservatives†to confer on all sorts of important issues. We cannot do this calmly, however, in a situation where clergy and congregations are being sued and put out of their churches and where the machinery of the Communion (read Anglican Communion Office) is used to undermine a true consensus, including the Lambeth Conference.
While keeping the shades down pretty far in your comments about the future after September 30, you do make a suggestive remark:
Do we seek, for example, seek a structure of some sort that is an alternative to TEC; or do we simply declare that we are TEC; that TEC has violated its constitution and that we will meet as TEC until such time as our opponents clearly “walk apart†or renounce their error and return?
Actually, I think the answer to this question is simply a both/and Yes. I do not see anything that Bishop Duncan or the overseas primates have done or said that is odds with your view. The question is how this works out give the particular polity and legal situation of the Episcopal Church in the USA. Perhaps we can add one further question: “How do we proclaim that we are the legitimate representive of TEC within the loose structures of the Anglican Communion?†Tortuous though it has been, the Windsor process as interpreted in the primates’ Communiques has charted a way forward, but it is not clear that the Archbishop of Canterbury is prepared to follow this course of action to its logical conclusion – by declaring with the primates that TEC has indeed “walked apart.â€
So to return to our exchange, I do hope that you and your comrades in the ACI will “continue the dialogue†with those in ACN who are seeking a faithful way forward for Anglicanism in North America and the Global Communion. We have differences, yes, but I do not see that they are such that should at the end of the day divide us.
Your brother in Christ,
Stephen
Posted by Stephen Noll on 08-06-2007 at 10:37 PM [link]
In one way these posts make me very sad. They show the deep divisions in the orthodox camp about the best way forward. It not so much that there are two paths, history has shown that often there are internal and external reformer when Christ is purifying a section of His Body. However there seems to be a non-acceptance often of the other calling, the goals are often the same but since the paths is difference there seems to friendly-fire trying to convince others to join them.
My hope is that the Primates remain unified and if one side or the other starts clearly going over the line that ACI would receive a call from ++Gomez or Dr. Noll+ might have a surprise call from ++Orombi telling them to ‘knock it off.’
In another way I’m completely fascinated for this taking place over the web & blogs. It has become clear a few times that some are very comfortable writing erudite articles in academic journals or carrying out intellectual tiffs in footnotes but very uncomfortable in this medium. Where critiques can come from laity and a broad range of laity from housewives, clerical workers, physicians and attorneys. So from a sociological aspect, these articles completely fascinate me.
Dear Steve–so the record is not clouded. Re: your comment. “I want to see the day when you and the ACI can sit down with the leaders and theologians sometimes called “federal conservatives†to confer on all sorts of important issues.”
This could be terribly misleading.
For the avoidance of doubt: one reason I suspect Radner was responded to as he was, was that people felt this was ill-timed. But we have been meeting with ‘federal conservatives’ on a regular basis, in St Louis, Camp Allen, Nairobi, Nassau, Washington DC, and about a month ago, at Wycliffe College. We know the issues and have hammered them out in public and in private exchanges. Your comment could reasonably be taken as saying we need to do something we have not done, and may not intend to do in the future, when we have been meeting and continue to meet with all conservative leaders — to a degree many decry as ‘too many meetings.’
I also agree my some that this issue is not just attitudinal, but substantive. Indeed, I see a good many people reacting not out of anger or depression at all, but out of real enthusiasm — for building a new church, shorn of compromise and excited about the future free of Canterbury and other compromising elements.
I hit ‘submit’ instead of ‘preview’ but have not much to add. Of course we hope that God will grant a way forward that honours the historical ecclesiology and mission of the Communion, and also gives succour to those who need to make hard decisions inside the US zone. I ask again for prayers for those who will be in positions of leadership as the next months unfold, that the Primates Meeting might be upheld, that the Dar requests might be acted upon with charity and good will, by those prepared to do so, and that those Bishops in TEC who do not wish to encourage the Instruments, *in their totality*, might indicate now where they wish to stand. That continues to be the place where ACI presses for clarity, in order that the Instruments might emerge with full integrity and with missional resolve. That was also, I might add, the wider consensus coming out of Oxford last month. Grace and peace.
[blockquote]Indeed, I see a good many people reacting not out of anger or depression at all, but out of real enthusiasm—for building a new church, shorn of compromise and excited about the future free of Canterbury and other compromising elements.[/blockquote] I am unclear on Dr. Seitz’s meaning here. Are you suggesting that a group? the ACI? a TEC replacement? A second parallel province unemcumbered with ++Cantuar? should come into existence? If so, how would the current instruments of unity be represented and what role would they play? Or is a totally new communion in the offing, and if so, how do you think it would be governed? My background is with polity issues, the “Congregational Way” vs. Presbyterianism. I see very little difference, if any, in the Theology of these two. Radner+ has clearly tied ecclesiology to our understanding of gospel. If a new more vital church, from the evangelical viewpoint, should come into existence, how do you and the ACI see these relating? And, is the “old communion” (through Canterbury) relevant at all?
Emily–ACI’s views on these matters are in the public record. Have a good day. CRS
Stephen Noll says:
Name a major American Anglican theologian – ever!
Ephraim Radner.+
I certainly have nothing to add but I do want to thank these gentlemen for demonstrating the positive side of the internet/blog world. What a privilege it is that we in the cheap seats get to be a participant in this timely and critical conversation. My thanks to all the major players for demonstrating excellence in thought and charity in spirit. Peace.
Over at Stand Firm, on the thread on heresy by Matt Kennedy, I mentioned Rowan Williams book Arius: Heresy and Tradition, the thoughts of which seem to me to be positively crying to be brought overtly into this discussion between Stephen Noll and Philip Turner. The question over whether this is a theological debate or a debate about tactics, what Turner seems to suggest has to do with ascetic and spiritual discipline (see his comments on Aquinas), is addressed directly by Williams in his discussion of the Arian heresy on page 91 of the expanded edition of Williams’ text. I hope you all don’t mind if I block quote it here: you can also read more of Williams’ book at amazon by using the search feature. Forgive any typos below, as I typed these passages into my computer by hand–it should not be read, in other words, as if it had our Archbishop of Canterbury’s imprimatur!
Your brother in Christ,
Clark
From Arius: Heresy and Tradition, page 91:
“And to those concerned with enforcing agreed decisions, whether for the sake of the empire’s unity like Constantine or for the sake of theological integrity like Athanasius (and perhaps Eusebius of Nicomedia), the independent and actually or potentially recalcitrant ‘school’ group was inevitably redefined not merely as a sect, but as a body outside the framework of civilized society. The Church’s new ‘visibility’ meant that the wrong sort of Christian group was regarded pretty much as the Church itself had been regarded by the pagan empire, as something subversive of the sacred character of social life.â€
And another for you gluttons for theological punishment:
“The Constantinian synthesis was in the long run destructive of both the ‘Catholic’ and the ‘Academic’ senses of the Church in most of the Christian world; as the existence of the monastic movement already implied, the tension between institutional unity and ‘open’ (i.e. publicly transmitted) tradition (with its risks of authoritarianism and formalism) on the one hand, and holiness, purity, and highly personalized guidance (with its risks of elitism and introversion) on the other was not to be wiped out by the Church’s metamorphosis into the guardian of legally sanctioned ideology. In what we have come to call the ‘post-Constintinian’ era, this tension is what is no longer avoidable; and we may perhaps learn from the story of the early Church that we are wrong to expect it to be resolved in terms of the victory of one model.â€
I must admit that I don’t know what to think. I now think the the best thing is for the laity to form house churches until all the clerical talent gets its act together (if it ever does) and then we can decide what we are going to do. Quite frankly I think many of the laity feel abandoned by the clergy and probably are starting to think they can get along quite nicely without any of them.
Amen to #8. I’ve been trying to keep up with this set of discussions, which I think is critical as we continue struggle under the burden of well-meaning but utterly theologically bewildered latter-day leadership in TEC, which I agree is heretical (“To Set Our Hope On Christ”, the official theological defense of TEC’s position on the homosexual question, looks to these eyes like a textbook exercise in the heresy of Montanism) and, probably owing to the multiple failures of us reasserters (if nothing else, we’ve managed too often to look uncharitable), irremediably mired in an utterly inadequate and shallow fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and content of Divine Revelation. The fate of their immortal souls is up to God, not us and we need to continue to be clear that we have nothing to say about it save to hope that we will one day share a hearty laugh with each of them before the Throne of Grace in His eternity. We are fast approaching the time when we can go no further with our reappraising friends here on earth, and many of us have been there for some time already.
Christopher Dawson has a wonderful line in (as I recall) “Dynamics of World History” about the direct relationship between impatience and heresy. One too often becomes a heretic precisely because, lacking patience, one tries to take a theological shortcut toward a desired end. This seems to these eyes as good a descriptor of the situation of TEC’s current leadership as I know. I don’t think he intends to say (and I believe that he would be wrong in any case) that impatience necessarily leads to heresy (if nothing else, one has to actually *be* a heretic before one can be found as such by a Council of the Church – and I also hope we will be careful, minding Dr. Turner’s admonition, not to heedlessly throw the term around), but we reasserters should be chary of letting impatience with the Primates, Archbishop of Canterbury, Windsor process, or, particularly, each other, lead us into any of the errors mentioned by Drs. Turner and Noll.
We need this conversation. We need each of us to clarify our understanding of the nature of the Church and how, in emerging from the current crisis, we will receive and be received by her after she has cast off the particular set of false teachers who currently lead TEC. We need each to be as clear as we can about our understandings of the Church’s relationship to God, man, and Divine Revelation. We need each to gain as clear an understanding as we can of the unique Anglican theology of the Church.
For myself, I worry a great deal about the distinctions being drawn too sharply between Holy Scripture and the Church, which both produced and was produced by the New Testament (just as God’s chosen people were as regards the Old Testament). We cannot claim with historical accuracy that the Church did not write scripture any more than we can say with theological accuracy that the Holy Spirit did not inspire it. The Church cannot, as Bishop Bennison infamously claimed, rewrite Holy Scripture without lying about who she is and has always been, without becoming something other than the Church (much the same may be said about the creeds).
We make distinctions between truth and falsehood in order to distance the two. We ought properly to make distinctions between truth and truth, including between Holy Scripture and the Church, in order to unite the two. Divine Revelation is incarnational, both divine and human. We are recipients, inheritors of a revelation comprised of the more divine Holy Scripture and a more human Church, neither of which can properly be without the other.
Each of these is in turn comprised of both the divine and human. Holy Scripture was written by free men (i.e. it is not divine dictation – as is, supposedly, the Quran) writing as they chose the way they chose to particular audiences at particular times. This human history can be studied and modern scholarship stands out as a great gift to the Church. Yet at the same time, they record divine actions, under fully divine inspiration and so their words, human though they may be, take on divine authority that transcends the intent and limitations of the authors. One of the great errors of the reappraisers is to try to separate (in somewhat Marcionite fashion) the gold of divine revelation from the supposed dross of human error. This denies the incarnational nature of Holy Scripture and tries to make God something other than who He has revealed Himself to be.
In the same way, the Church is incarnational, fully human and fully divine (I say “incarnational”, not Incarnate – she reflects Christ as the moon reflects the sun, providing light by which men may see in the dark). Her human aspects are only too obvious. Her divinity was given from the first, when Christ, risen from the dead, breathed life into her (just as the Father had into the first Adam in Genesis) in the Gospel of John. He promised that the Holy Spirit would lead her into all truth and we deny this at the cost of making Him a liar.
I could go on. The Anglican Church was founded by Gregory the Great in 597, not by Henry VIII in 1534 nor Elizabeth I in 1558. She is part of the great Catholic tradition and, at her best, is the last, best exemplar of Western Patristic and early medieval Catholicism, fully open to and accepting of the corrections of the Reformers (though without the errors of some of them as regards Holy Eucharist, for instance) and yet in full continuity with what the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church has always been. Whether or to what extent she necessarily needs the headship (in whatever form) of Canterbury, or of a Covenant Document, we can and should debate. We need as much clarity and understanding as we can muster of what we believe our Lord’s Church to be and how we ought to relate to her, so that we can come through the present morass and confusion as her triumphant witnesses and children. Much thanks for leaders like Drs. Turner and Noll for setting a such a good example of how to carry on the discussion.
And thanks to you, too, Daniel Muth.
[i]Name a major American Anglican theologian – ever![/i]
That’s easy–William Porcher DuBose (1836–1918), who independently advocated an incarnational theology that anticipates many of the themes later mined by Karl Barth. [i]The Soteriology of the New Testament[/i] (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 2nd ed. 1906) is one of the best theological works I have ever read by anybody.
Much of what he wrote was apropos to our current crisis. Unrighteousness—conduct that violates the will of God—was secondary for DuBose. Unrighteousness is merely a consequence. [b]Sin[/b] is its cause. Fundamentally, sin is not wrongful acts, but the wrong relationship that gives rise to such acts. The opposite of sin is not merely righteousness—good behavior—but [b]holiness[/b]. We cannot be holy unless we partake in the divine nature, which is holiness itself. We can only be holy through a personal relationship with God. When that relationship breaks down, we can only partake in the condition of nature without God, which is sin leading to disobedience and death.
Jesus Christ is our reconciliation because he abolishes sin in us and restores us to holiness. However, the New Testament clearly teaches still more than this. Jesus is not just the cause of salvation, but is salvation itself. We are not saved by an example or influence from afar, DuBose points out, but by “the personal Christ personally present in†us. “We are so personally related to Him and He to us, that in an effectual and real sense His death becomes our death and His resurrection our resurrection, and He Himself in us all that constitutes our Salvation.†Jesus is not active in us as a memory or influence, but as a living person who calls us to a relationship that is life.
#8 WG you took the words out of my mouth. All the reasserter hand-wringing and the reappraiser gloating are both mistaken and misplaced regarding these exchanges. This is what actual dialogue looks like (not the reappraising juggernaut to crush dissent known as “dialogue”), when brothers and sisters in Christ debate, even vigorously, without dividing. As Solomon wrote, “Iron sharpens iron” and truly among reasserters there is more that unites than divides us, namely being forgiven of sin and being made new (born again) in Jesus Christ the Lord!