Purple Fever: A Retrospect

The honour I never almost had:

Purple Fever is an awful disease, it was candidates night, and the next day was the election of our Suffragan Bishop.  I who was never nominated, and did not desire to be nominated, am somewhat chagrined that not only will I not be elected, but I will not even have bragging rights; “Back in 2008 I was nominated for Suffragan Bishop.”  Even the possibility of a small self-glorifying exaggeration is  clean cut off, “I was almost elected.”

“It’s a terrible thing, this irony of not being nominated for a job I wouldn’t want and wasn’t even nominated for. It’s somewhat akin to being a guardian cherub desiring ultimate enthronement and then being summarily forced out of heaven by those insufferable angels.  I, the Morning Star, I have fashioned for myself a coat of many colours, I do not have to dress in white.  I do not want to be dressed in white kowtowing to His royal goodness YHWH, and I almost seized the heavenly throne; a throne I could have had if only, so at least I have bragging rights.”

The World in the Church

What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.[i] 

The culture of the Weimar Republic in the 1920’s was hedonistic, immoral, and degenerate, and the emergence of new artistic movements added to the malaise.  We find today some of those same elements in full flower in our media driven culture.   The collapse of the economy in 1929 ushered in a Great Depression.  Unemployment, crime, and despair rose sharply.  We find echoes of that in our own economy with rising unemployment and undisciplined crowds occupying city centers with mixed approval and disapproval from the rest of us.

It was during the early 1930s that Bonhoeffer, in a lecture given at the University of Berlin, said the following:

“The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church because the Church speaks of its end as though it had already happened--as though the world had already been judged.  The old world does not like being regarded as dead.  The Church has never been surprised at this, nor is it surprised by the fact that again and again men come to it who think the thoughts of the old world--and who is there entirely free from them?  But the Church is naturally in tumult when these children of the world that has passed away lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves.  They want the new and only know the old.  And thus they deny Christ the Lord.” [ii]

                In the Church of today the “children of the world that has passed way lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves.  They want the new and only know the old.  And thus they deny Christ the Lord.”  That denial is clear, specific, and oddly self-righteous.  They tell us that Jesus is only a way for Christians, and that other ways are of equal or greater value.  They tell us that the acceptance of Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour is a Western Heresy, being obviously ignorant that Eastern figures like St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught the same “heresy.”  They tell us that we must accommodate to the culture of the world.  For them the Church is the not the salt of the world, but the world is the salt of the Church.

                A new thing has emerged.  In the past history of the Church, heretics left the church and attacked it from without, but now the heretics stay in the Church and attack it from within.[iii]  Integrity would demand that they leave the Church that in fact they hate, but they are driven by selfish ambition and the lust for personal power over others.  We are in the midst of a spiritual warfare that is increasingly less and less subtle.

The solution is not cowardly flight, but courageous fight.  Once more we need to strongly embrace the declaration, “I will live with integrity.”[iv]  Rather than cringing with fear at the accusation that we are narrow minded (the insult being that we are Fundamentalists) we must with boldness declare that there is an objective Truth, the universal Tao, and that moral and ethical standards have an eternal origin and value. 

Once more we must confess that not only do we believe in Jesus Christ as an intellectual proposition, but that we have in fact undeniably met him, and him alone will we serve.

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[i] Ecclesiastes 1:9

[ii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, translated by John C. Fletcher.  (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 11

[iii] Peter Kreeft in a Question and Answer period at the Stanton Lecture Series, in Dallas, Nov. 12, 2011

[iv] Psalm 26:11, BCP

Egypt’ Land

I ran into a disturbing text this morning and immediately thought of the continuing attempts to accommodate the Church to the standards of the world.  Certainly the opening sermon of the last diocesan convention invited us into such a process of transformation.  The process was called smoltification.  Smoltification is the process of transformation in the young salmon as it adapts to the sea and becomes a mature fish. 

But what for us is the sea if not the world itself?  "The waters that you saw, . . . are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues (Rev. 17:1). Creation is a wonderful gift, and when we are invited to set our minds on “whatever is true,” we are also invited to set our minds “whatever is pure” (Philippians 4:8).  You know the old axiom: We are called to be in the world, not of the world; and there is a difference.

Here is the disturbing text:

"Ah, stubborn children," declares the LORD, "who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!  (Isaiah 30:1-2).

“When Israel was in Egypt’ land,

Let My people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let My people go!”

All of us were once in Egypt’ Land, why would we want to go back there again?  We already know that “If anyone loves the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  Why on middle earth would we want to transform the standards of the Church to the standards of the world?  Middle earth exists between Heaven and Hell, and those are both options.  I think I would rather take C. S. Lewis’s bus to the elysian fields of paradise than accommodate myself to the endless Shadowland that ultimately goes you know where.

Let my people go?  That’s not really an option.  I would much rather fight than switch!

For a further reflection on the sermon at convention see: http://anglicanissues.blogspot.com/2011/11/soft-cudgel.html

The Soft Cudgel

Did you see what I saw, the preacher high and lifted up above the peoples?  He was courteous and even smiled appropriately, but there was a subtle undertone.  He didn’t know us, he just assumed that he did.  As a result he was supercilious, talking down to the gathering before him.  A few were enraptured because they agreed.  A few were enraptured because he was important and they enjoyed his finely judged interjections of humour, after all a preacher needs to be entertaining?  Many were initially open and enquiring, but as he wielded his soft cudgel they drew farther and farther away, and some of them didn’t even realize why.  Some were just angry that he had even been invited to preach.  Perhaps they needed a cudgelling, but one more forthright and planted on the Rock.

The preacher used the gospel instead of preaching the gospel.  He had an agenda that was not the agenda of the living Word but the agenda of the culture that he had adopted as his own spiritual agenda.  Just because something is spiritual doesn’t mean that it represents the balance of the written word of God; even though that is not determinative for those who hold the agenda of whatever is the current culture.  Truly all men before God are equal, and that as a principle is fair enough, but it’s not the whole Truth; there are other truths and only one Truth can govern them all: Jesus Christ is Lord; not the teachings of the current culture.

To be quite fair the preacher was being as honest and as fair with us as he knew how, but a lack self-knowledge is often one of our limitations.  By his own admission the message of the soft cudgel was not the one he grew up with.  He had grown up with the hard cudgel and that was just as bad with its intolerant attitudes.  If you grow up with a hard cudgel it’s hard not to cudgel others even when you reject the hard cudgel . What he didn’t know was that it wasn’t necessary to throw out the baby with the bath water. 

Oh what a style!  No hard cudgel here, not the least, but a cudgel nonetheless, softly cudgelling with a smothering stroke; self-righteous, possessing the only truth, such as it was.  Part of the problem was that he was blind to his audience and couldn’t see that he wasn’t addressing a hard cudgel audience but many moderate, temperate people who would not enjoy being cudgelled with a truth out of the context of the larger Truth.  Such cudgelling polarizes people who don’t even realize they are being cudgelled.  On reflection most thoughtful people can tell when the cudgel is the preacher’s agenda and not an agenda of the Spirit of God. People tend not to like being cudgelled no matter how soft the cudgel.  

Honey and Hemlock

It is impossible to take the Church out of the world, and it is impossible to take the world out of the Church.  Jesus forbade it.  “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while he was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”[i]  The weeds were zizanion, tares, a form of darnel which resembles wheat, but its grains are black and poisonous.  Zizanion produces a form of intoxication which can end in death; so also do the doctrines of the apostates in our field of the kingdom.

When the servants asked the Master if they should pull out the zizanion he forbade it, saying, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.”[ii]  When the grains of wheat are ready for harvest they bend down, but the zizanion stands up above them and can be easily identified and removed.  There is a lot of zizanion in the Church, but the fruit of the Church, thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold is not yet mature enough to be harvested.

In the field of the visible Kingdom, the Church, there is good grain and zizanion, and often the servants of the Church become panicky and want to pull out the zizanion, or failing that, pull out the Church from the field.  If you try to pull out the zizanion some of the wheat will be damaged.  If you try to pull out the sons and daughters of the Church you inevitably will pull out some of the zizanion them.  In the premature harvest some of the tallest stalks will not be wheat.  You can’t purify and preserve the Church by pulling it out of The Episcopal Church, or out of the Anglican Communion; and be aware of some of the tallest stalks when you try to do that.

In the field of the kingdom, the world is in the Church and the Church is in the world.  Obedience demands courage and steadfastness, not flight.  Of the servants of the kingdom let it be said, “Your servants love her very rubble, and are moved to pity even for her dust.”[iii]  When you live in the field of the kingdom you will by necessity be faced with the mixture of honey and hemlock.  “So it is most needful that those who wish to separate out the honey from the mixture should beware that they do not take the deadly residue by mistake.”[iv]

There are two basic tests for hemlock, correct doctrine, and love.[v]  Vincent of Lerins is correct when he says, “We take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.”[vi]  To negotiate away from either the authority of Scripture or the witness of tradition is to feed on the intoxication of zizanion.  To sue your brothers over property is a witness the quality of your love.

The first solution is not flight, but in steadfastness and in the clarity of the doctrine held by loving hearts.  When a prominent church leader tells us that a personal saving faith in Jesus is a western heresy, and we know full well that Eastern saints like Cyril of Jerusalem held that everyone coming to baptism must have a personal faith in Christ, we see the parable of the zizanion and good wheat clearly illustrated.  Until the harvest time our clear and loving response is to point out the zizanion and say, “Don’t eat it!” 

Let’s be honest, some of the fields of the kingdom are almost entirely run over with zizanion.  The Lord himself declares, “I know your works.  You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.  Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die.”[vii]  He does not say that the faithful should flee but rather, “You have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.  The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.”[viii] 

The one who conquers is not the one who flees, or even wins the political battles in the field of the Church, but the one who remains steadfast and faithful.  I and others who refuse to flee, say with Paul, “I make up in my own body that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his body which is the Church.”[ix]  That is not a ministry of giddy happiness, but it is a ministry of a very real and unique joy in sharing in the incarnate presence of Christ Jesus who loves his Church on earth.

There are others who share that same ministry of suffering joy, and they have been driven out of the Episcopal Church.  It is hard for us who would rather fight than switch to judge when enough is enough.  How does a priest in a diocese in the northeast survive when she is told by her peers that she is not welcome at the clericus because she does not support the homosexual-lesbian agenda?  Woops.  Did I say “she”?  She would not be welcome in some conservative dioceses either.  Some who would reject her because she is a female priest don’t believe in the resurrection either, but they do hold their fingers correctly when they “say the Mass”.  Churchmanship is no guarantee of either orthodoxy or charity.

There is a solution, but whether or not you appreciate it depends on whether or not you irrevocably want your own way despite the cost to the Church itself.  That solution is submission, dare I say “obedience” to the proposed Anglican Covenant.  The Covenant is not a perfect solution, but it will provide the basis for unity for the greater majority of the Anglican Communion.  This solution is actually a submission to Catholic Order and to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.  I would suggest that integrity would demand that if you don’t agree with the Anglican Covenant you should humbly acknowledge that and take the necessary steps to remove yourself from the Anglican Communion, instead of trying to drive out those who do share a common faith.

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[i] Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

[ii] Matthew 13:29

[iii] Psalm 102:14 BCP

[iv] Gregory Palamas, The Triads, I, i. 20

[v] I John 4.

[vi] Chapter 4 of The Commitorium, AD 434

[vii] Rev. 3:1b-2

[viii] Rev. 3:4-5

[ix] Col. 1:24

The Apostasy of Division

There is a great misunderstanding being promoted by conservatives who have left The Episcopal Church, a misunderstanding that is the other side of the revisionist heresy, that forcing a change establishes new truth. On neither side is this theologically, or biblically, thought through.

In part the mistake of the revisionists is that you can’t drive out the impurity by expelling conservatives from your midst; you will, in your own way, become the new conservatives, a new cast of fundamentalist liberals. That is already clearly happening and in some dioceses those with conservative views are not tolerated.

The great misunderstanding of some of the conservatives who have left The Episcopal Church is that you can’t come out from amongst them and be clean; you take your sins with you. If they have left a diocese with a godly bishop there is no excuse for their actions.

Trapped in the middle is the greater part of what used to be The Episcopal Church. Some have been driven out with the conservatives who have left seeking purity; some have stayed to struggle in the midst of a church which is increasingly in danger of becoming apostate. All are wounded and grieved by the actions and attitudes of rigid militants on either side.

Both sides of the coin are reacting emotionally rather than rationally, establishing on either side what they feel as the foundation on which to build a new purified church.

The hope for health for the Church is in those of us who are trapped in the middle. It is not enough for us to wait passively; waiting passively will only contribute to the current decline in the Church. Those of us in trapped in the middle must find our voice and let our views be known.

Not only that, but what we say must be based on a sound biblical theology that is informed by the tradition and history of the Church. This voice must reflect not only a love of the truth, but a love of Him who alone is the way, the truth, and the life.

The Church in Troubled Times

In this day when the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are fractured by dissension I find the following excerpt from Origin helpful.

“I think that both the temple and the body of Jesus can be seen together as a type of the Church. For the Church is being built out of living stones; it is in process of becoming a spiritual dwelling for a holy priesthood, raised on the foundations of apostles and prophets, with Christ as its chief cornerstone. Hence it bears the name “temple.” On the other hand, it is written: You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it” (Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John).

This refers to the Church as it is, not to the Church as idealized. The key phrase is, “it is in process.” Karl Barth, a last century theologian remarked that one of God’s miracles is that the Church still survives. When looking at the Church and its troubles, take the long view, God does. He views the Church from an eternal perspective. There is nothing new under the sun, not even the dissension that marks our contemporary experience.

Origen goes on to comment on the Church of his day.
“Thus even if the harmonious alignment of the stones should seem to be destroyed and fragmented and if, as described in the twenty-second psalm, all the bones which go to make up Christ’s body should seem to be scattered by insidious attacks in persecutions or times of trouble, or by those who in days of persecution undermine the unity of the temple, nevertheless the temple will be rebuilt and the body will rise again on the third day, after the day of evil which threatens it and the day of consummation which follows” (Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John).
Origen links together Christ’s body and the Body of Christ which is the Church.

Accordingly the Psalmist says prophetically of the Christ and his Body,
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet- I can count all my bones- they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:14-18).

The Church is indeed scattered by insidious attacks in persecutions, times of trouble, and by those who in our days undermine the unity of the temple which is the Body of Christ. Make no mistake; the unity of the Body of Christ is founded upon a common understanding of the teaching of the Church. To quote St. Vincent of Lerins (AD 434), “we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.” In our day that finds clear expression in the Anglican Covenant. To undermine the unity of the Body of Christ by claiming some “prophetic” superiority to the Body as a whole is perilous. The Lord testifies, “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:16).

Rather than follow the dubious spirit of theological innovation, follow the recommendation of the Lord Himself! “Thus says the LORD: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it’ (Jeremiah 6:16). The long history of the Church has many examples of those who want to drink from a different well. There is nothing new under the sun!

This has tremendous implications not only for the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church, but for us also as individual believers. It is of vital importance that our feet are firmly planted on both Holy Scripture and the Teaching of the Church as it comes down to us through the centuries. One way of preserving this is by embracing the characteristic three-fold Spiritual model provided by Anglican Spirituality: The Daily Prayer Offices; Recollection, the practice of the awareness of the Presence of God in meditation and short informal prayers: and in frequent Eucharist. This three-fold emphasis flows down to us through the Benedictine tradition. You and I have the unique privilege of anchoring our faith in this tradition by affiliating with the Order of St. Benedict. If you are interested, ask me how.

There is a day coming of restoration for the Church, not only the final day when Christ comes to claim his own, but the history of the Church testifies that there have always been seasons of spiritual renewal for the Church which is the body of Christ. Until that day we are called to make firm our faith; and to pray and labour for fresh springs of the Spirit in the life of the Church.