What is all the fuss about?

Bishop John Keliher

Recently a friend of long standing said to me, "I suppose this whole fracas in the Anglican Communion is over the issue of homosexuality. Isn’t that a bit silly?" I tried to explain that if were only about homosexuality it would be more that a bit silly but even old friends are not very interested in discussions involving theology. Theology does not translate well into sound bites and this is a culture that expects to understand E=mc² in thirty seconds or less – pictures at eleven.

The subject of homosexuality fits nicely in a thirty second sound bite. Discussing God and morality does not.

For those Anglicans who subscribe to classical Christianity, the Anglican premise is laid out in Articles VI and XX of Cranmer’s 39 Articles. The thesis is that the Church’s teachings must conform to what is consistent in the Old and New Testaments. It is not by chance that the secularists in Anglicanism have relegated the 39 Articles to the category of "Historic Documents" and that they deny them any authority.

Article VI reads, "Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or be thought necessary to salvation…" The rest of that Article lists the Canonical Books of the Bible "of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church."

Article XX says, "The Church has power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation."

So, if neither Article is, in fact, an Article of Faith for an Anglican today, then the Bible may be regarded as if it were merely a collection of folk tales that may or may not have implications for a believer’s morality and, in any case, what ever it says can be over ridden by a majority opinion based on evidence derived from human reason based on evidence from sociology, social psychology, economics, medical science or political necessity. But if the Bible is the Word of God, and if the 39 Articles are regarded as a litmus test of one’s Faith, then the secularist position is, in fact, heretical. And that creates two problems of quite different sorts.

First, there is the problem of interpreting what, exactly, the Bible means as opposed to what it says. Secular humanists and classical Christians may read the same passages of Scripture with out agreeing that what it says, however plainly the words on the page seem to lay out a message, is the authoritative Word of God and is binding upon all believers. Indeed, the very notion that the Bible is Holy, is the Word of God, is a subject of contention. Within the Anglican Communion there are clergy and laity who are secular humanists, classical Christians, and those who understand neither point of view, do not wish to be drawn into the fray, and simply like the ceremonies, the hymns, and the architecture but are deaf to theological disputation. Among classic Christians in the Anglican Communion there are very few who suggest that every word in the Bible as we have it in any translation is exactly what God demanded that the author of any of its books write. Nor are there many who would suggest that every sentence is to be understood literally rather than as a metaphor, a simile, an allegory, or a poetic turn of phrase. Classic Anglican Christians stand firmly on a murky quicksand of "reasonableness" in interpreting the Bible. Reasonableness is always in short supply it seems.

The second issue that arises is as vexing as the first. Having exhausted reason, how do you deal with intransigent differences? Simply turning a blind eye toward these differences hoping they will go away is a technique that might work in the short run but eventually one side or the other perceives that it may lose the power to replicate its clergy or even continue a tolerated existence for its present clergy and the tedious and malignant process of separation begins. At present in the Anglican Communion, secularist seem to be in control of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of England, and The Episcopal Church in the United States and they would like to be rid of the classical Anglicans – but not their properties and endowments. The classical Anglicans would like to depart but they want to keep their properties and endowments. Each has raised a legal argument in defense of its position and a theological argument regarding its own righteousness and its opponent’s folly.

The problem in Anglicanism today is common to all the denominations of Western Christianity in North America and Europe. This is a secular society, this pan Atlantic community. It views all the denominations of Christianity with a baleful stare of boredom and while "mainstream" churches shed members in droves, lessor breeds whose theological views are regarded with disdain increase in size. Mainstream churches are led by an elitist corps that finds security in new discoveries, compilations of statistics, science in all its forms, and political correctness. But this leadership group finds historical Christianity bothersome, and morality based on historic religions principles, repugnant.

The problem stated most simply is this: there is a clash of two (or more) cultures involving how each perceives what is relevant to and in this society. In general one can say that the clash is between a secularist view of the world and a classical religious perception of reality. In point of fact, Christian communities of faith are no more – and no less – divided than are Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist between those who favor their classical roots and the post-modern secularist contingent found in each. But I am concerned primarily with Christianity and its internal conflicts. Hence this essay.

If one must assign a beginning to this division the work of the brothers Grimm might do as well as any for a datum point. Their interest was in creating a dictionary on historical principles, that is, a dictionary that would explain when a word first came into use and the meanings it had acquired from that date to the present. This led them to collect folktales because in these the earliest form of a word used in the German language might most easily be found. They were not, however, above creating stories in which words that were probably ancient, but for which no agreed upon source could be found. Hence some of Grimm’s fairy tales originated with the brothers and were far from antique but they did explain words whose antecedents were otherwise unknown or undiscoverable.

That aside, their adventure in word sleuthing coincided with the application of these same principles to Books of the Bible. Dating specific books of the Old Testament according to word usage became known as Higher Criticism.

Frankly, Higher Criticism provided a very useful tool, enabling even non-linguists to see that many parts of the Old Testament had been edited and re-edited in order to make passages which contained archaic terms or idiomatic expressions no longer meaningful, intelligible to generations far removed from a particular book’s origin in time. Many of those who think the King James Bible is the gold standard of translations are blissfully unaware that it is regularly revised in order to continue the lucrative copyright enjoyed by Oxford and Cambridge Universities. In the main, however, these revisions, ancient and modern, are immaterial in so far as they involved the principle theological concepts and requirements of classical Christianity or Judaism.

But by the middle of the Twentieth Century the application of scholarly linguistic dissection of Biblical texts, together with the rise of secular humanism produced among mainline Christian churches a form of schizophrenia. On the one hand, among the secularists, the thesis gained credence that "the Bible was written by men and it can be re-written by men." And this led others to embrace a form of paranoia founded on the fear that the secularists intended to re-write the Bible by editing out what they found politically incorrect. Well, the secularists have not omitted portions of either the Old or New Testaments but they have stopped using readings from either that contradict their views on life, love, sex, ethics, morality and public policy. And that is, precisely, what all the fuss is about.

Recently the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, A. E. T. Harper, offered an interesting take on Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Harper cites several passages from Hooker’s work to suggest that St. Paul’s comments concerning sexual behavior belonged to a class of passages that Hooker would have classified as "by-speeches in some historical narrative or other."

Hooker wrote the definitive defense of Anglican churchmanship during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and under the watchful eye of Whitgrift, her Archbishop of Canterbury. Whitgrift may have had some sympathy for Calvinism but he was the Queen’s Archbishop and he enforced conformity to the Queen’s concept of Anglicanism to the great discomfort of the Calvinist contingent among the clergy. Hooker’s writings defended the rites, ceremonies, vestments, sacraments and theology which the Church of England had largely taken over and revised from its Roman origins. The Calvinists were keen on quoting passages of the Old and New Testament to suggest that if there was no positive statement in favor of any rite, ceremony, vestment, sacrament or theological premise, it ought to be scrapped. Their citations were frequently from passages that were asides, parenthetical expressions, "by-speeches" found in historical narratives. Hooker, however, never considered the Gospels or the Epistles to be historical narratives - not in part, not in whole. They were, for Hooker, the Word of God and they contained the Laws of God. In Book 5, Chapter 22, Hooker says in his paragraph 2: The voice of the testimony of the Church acknowledging Scripture to be the law of the living God, is for the truth and certainty thereof no mean evidence."

The Laws of God were quite different in Hookers eyes from the laws of the Church concerning its rites, ceremonies, vestments, sacraments and theological statements. Laws regarding the Church in its social sense could be inferred by reason from Scripture and by reason amended or revised. The Laws of God were imbedded in Scripture and could only be obeyed or disobeyed but neither amended by reason or revised by statute.

Hooker would not have appreciated Harper’s assumption that sociology or psychology or physiology might provide a more dependable guide to sexual morality than Scripture. In Book 4, chapter 6, he says in [7]: "So if we speak of fornication, he that knoweth no law but only the law of nature, must needs make thereof a narrower construction than he that measureth the same by a law, wherein sundry kinds of even conjugal copulation are prohibited as impure, unclean, unhonest. St. Paul himself doth term incestuous marriage fornication. {I Corinthians 5:1} If any do think that the Christian Gentiles themselves, through loose and corrupt custom of those times, took simple fornication for no sin, and were in that respect offensive unto believing Jews, which by the Law had been better taught; our proposing of another conjecture is unto theirs no prejudice." So, then, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, verses 24-32 are not just "by-speeches in a historical narrative." Nor in his stern letter to the citizens of Ephesus – Ephesians 5:5 – a by-speech in a historical narrative. Nor, for that matter are Romans 13:13; or I Corinthians 18; or Hebrews 13:4. Paul is delivering the Law of God: some things are simply immoral by definition and are, therefore, sins. And what can one do about one’s sins? Confess them to God and repent.

St. John has it in his first Epistle, chapter 1, verses 8-10, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned we make him a liar and his word is not in us." And in chapter 2, verse 1, that "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world."

So the problem with homosexual behavior is that some would deny that it is a sin – and some would heartlessly suggest that it is an unforgivable sin – and both are wrong. All sins are forgivable provided they are acknowledged – not to you or to me but to God because it is God who offers the forgiveness – not you, not I, but Jesus Christ. And neither you nor I can do other than sin if we deny that God has the power, in his infinite mercy and compassion, to forgive sinners of whose behavior we do not approve, we may resent, and we may think horrid. Horrid they may be, but not beyond the redeeming love of God – but only if the sin is acknowledged to God. And neither of us, neither you nor I, is competent to judge either the depth of the sinner’s repentance or contrition. Like every other sinner, we are all the expectant beneficiaries of God’s redeeming Grace not because we are good but because God is.

So the fuss is all about some folks trying to fudge whether we are all sinners, whether the Bible means what it says, whether we can be forgiven our several sins, whether Jesus is, in fact the Son of God and life eternal may be had because of belief in him as the Way, the Law, of God. In Western society it goes against the grain to suggest that anything is, in fact, a sin, or that we are, in fact, sinners. And the Church struggles to be not merely a part of Western society but a decisive leader in that society. It does so at the peril of its soul.

At its core, the message of the Christian Church is this: we exist in a very strange universe and we are not in charge of it. Indeed, we are often not very successful as individuals in ruling our own lives. But the God who is the creator of the universe is infinitely merciful and if we turn to him, acknowledge our short comings, and try our best to follow his precepts as laid out in Scripture, we may confidently expect to receive his blessing and eternal life. But if we lie to God about our actions, if we assume that we cannot do anything that would displease God, we have become dead in the midst of this life and dead to eternal life.

The fuss is all about being honest about our relationships with each other and with God.

And at some point in time reconciliation will occur. Partisan passions will diminish. Mankind will be reconciled to God. It may not happen in our life time; it may not happen in this life. But we must watch and pray in the expectation that God’s saving grace will eventually overcome our human frailty and arrogance.

Richard Hooker eventually left his post as Master of the Temple, weary of the politics of court and chancery, and became a humble cleric. The contentious life of an ecclesiastical politician was not the life he wanted or needed. Whether his greatest contribution to the Church was his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity or his parish ministry is an interesting question. Obviously, however, Hooker thought it was the latter. Let us follow his example.

Ecclesiastical politicians are not likely to find the life of a hospice chaplain exciting or working with the homeless or the addicted fulfilling. And only if the parish is large enough some who find the in the church a legislative venue may think the work is fairly meaningful. But standing in the sun and rain with the sheep of Christ is really what it is all about and that is what we are called to do, to feed his flock – one sheep at a time We are not called to greatness of title; we are not called to judge humanity, that is God’s prerogative. We are called to proclaim the redemption of mankind through the Grace of Jesus Christ.

It is my assumption that we may joyfully work together with anyone, any group, that shares our faith as expressed in the Creeds and as revealed in Scripture. It is my further assumption that we are obliged to pray earnestly for those who do not share our belief in either the Creeds or the sufficiency of Scripture. Their souls are as precious in the sight of God as are our own.

May the peace of God be with us, support us, steady us, strengthen us and keep us from becoming certain that those with whom we differ are damned – or fall into the pit of believing that we are damned because we differ. We differ because we are all trying to understand the mind of God, and we cannot understand God. We can only stand briefly, sheepishly, in his presence, aware of our unworthiness to be there, and grateful for his mercy in accepting us as we are.