Which is more dishonest? To hold would be leaders to the official standards of the community? Or to belong to a community that has these standards without adhering to them?

Certainly Anglicanism has been reluctant to police boundaries too rigorously. But the boundaries do exist.

I think that this article irresponsibly conflates the concerns of ordinary Anglicans with the far right agenda of the heresy hunters. Not everyone who opposed giving consent to Fr. Forrester's election did so to placate the self-proclaimed guardians of orthodoxy. When even the standing committe of the Diocese of California withholds consent, it seems apparent that something bigger than a right wing witch hunt is going on here.

Yes, "it seems apparent that something bigger than a right-wing witch hunt is going on here." What's going on is the crisis of honesty in the church, which Adrian Worsfold has just elucidated at some length. Thanks to Jim Naughton for at last finding a post that has something to do with the religious life we live today.

"The official standards of the community"? What if they're wrong, or just irrelevant? How do we move on? "The boundaries do exist." But who sets them? (Okay, Bill, I see you waving your hand.) The fact is, the boundaries are arbitrary. They may be set by authority or custom. Textual criticism has taken authority from the ancient narratives, and custom is changing.

I don't get the charge of irresponsibility. The far right heresy hunters have a political agenda, but the home-grown heresy discerners and guardians of orthodoxy are playing the same game and so give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Bill, again, theology is story, opinion, received opinion. Your disputes with Pike, Spong, Forrester, and hapless correspondents on the Café, cannot be settled with facts or evidence. If the church follows Adrian Worsford's suggestions, it will be different than it was, no longer the creation of Nicea, but it may prove useful for a bit longer. If it follows your suggestions, I think it will be a theological discussion club of little interest to the practical world. (Or at best, a museum of some really lovely architecture and music.)

Murdoch Matthew
using Gary's sign-in

Murdoch, I'm afraid you're showing your bias by claiming that Buddhist practice by a Christian priest reflects "the religious life we live today". That's simply not true of 99% of liturgical Christians in the US. This kind of mindless syncreticism is a feature of the religious practice of upper middle class "seeker" elites, not ordinary Christians in the pews.

It's also worth noting that my generation, 30 and below, is pretty tired of the Church being taken over by un-Christian practices and being told that our orthodoxy (lived out in ways that are pro-LGBT, pro-justice, pro-racial reconciliation, sometimes pro-choice, etc.) is right wing.

Orthodoxy as represented in the Creeds, Scripture, and the Fathers and Mothers whom we commemorate and whose intersession we ask in our prayers is full of gifts handed on to us by centuries of Christians. Don't call us right wing because we want to live out that patrimony.

It's worth noting that by joining another religion (Buddhist lay ordination being akin to confirmation, right?), Mr. Thew Forrester has left Christianity and (I believe--I'm not an Episcopalian) broken Episcopal canon law. If he's no longer a Christian priest, how could he be consecrated a bishop?

Chris Tessone

"The official standards of the community"? What if they're wrong, or just irrelevant?

The fact is, the boundaries are arbitrary. They may be set by authority or custom.

theology is story, opinion, received opinion.

If the church follows Adrian Worsford's suggestions, it will be different than it was, no longer the creation of Nicea, but it may prove useful for a bit longer.

And no, I'm not a right-winger. I do believe in justice and inclusion for all the faithful. But I can find little to recommend the left-wing desire to jettison everything that the tradition of the Church teaches us. There must be boundaries and discipline (and the prayer book itself provides a schema of personal and corporate rule and discipline) Otherwise, how does the Church define itself in the world? Is it simply to be the community of those who hold the right, politically-correct opinions, already accepted by the majority of the secular?

His yoke may be easy, and his burden light -- but it still is a yoke and a burden.

Robert Goulding

Interesting that what seems self-evident from one point of view sounds incredible from another.

I wasn't thinking of Buddhist infection when I said Worsfold was addressing contemporary religious life, just that he was exploring different spiritual resources to guide his personal practice. Certainly Buddhist meditation has something to offer a Christian, even a bishop. (Buddhists tell us to practice compassion, seek justice, and cultivate awareness [mindfulness]; this seems to me a good guide to life.)

By "story" I mean language. All our knowledge and memory is mediated in language. Every sentence is a short story -- noun, verb, object. Stories may or not be true, but they structure our thought. Language can create worlds with no objective existence, but in the past few centuries we've learned to check some of our stories against evidence. Stories that can be proved or disproved can be called science, or fact. Others are opinion -- well developed and traditional perhaps, but still opinion. Belief cannot be distinguished from prejudice, as William Temple observed -- neither depends on evidence.

There is no metaphysical Truth. All in this world is flux or change. We must be open to new evidence, different interpretations. People who suppose they possess timeless "truth" take it as warrant to seal their minds and suppress error. Truth can become a license to kill. Better to think provisionally -- this is how things seem to be and gives good results; if new facts are found or understanding changes, then the story can be amended.

(I hate to use words like new, modern, present-day -- makes it seem as if we're talking fashions or fads. No, we simply know more about how the universe works today, and old narratives don't fit the more accurate understanding.)

How does the church define itself in the world? By being a community of people who support one another and work to improve the common lot. Adrian Worsfold above has some appealing suggestions. Sorry if I've distracted attention from his thoughts.

Murdoch Matthew

Buddhists tell us to practice compassion, seek justice, and cultivate awareness [mindfulness]; this seems to me a good guide to life.

You don't think Christianity tells us to practice these things?

I say again -- wanting to join another religion while remaining Christian and mixing the practices and beliefs of the two without distinction (and trying to overturning long-standing Christian beliefs about atonement, as Mr. Thew Forrester has done) is something that concerns a very few elites, most of them clergy. Thomas Merton they are not.

Lots of people study other religions and get interested them. Interfaith dialogue is necessary. That's not the same as what Mr. Thew Forrester has done. It's not "contemporary religious life" for most in the pews.

As for this:

There is no metaphysical Truth.

That's simply outside the bounds of the Christian faith. You're welcome to believe that (but is your above statement true on a metaphysical level? relativism gets rather absurd in practice). However, Christianity as a religion is concerned with Truth and the pursuit of a life that celebrates and lives out what is good in God's creation. Our baptismal vows actually mean something -- if we're trying to rewrite their substance or cross our fingers while we say them, that's dishonest and harmful -- not only to ourselves but to our communities.

This is starting to sound a bit like, "I want to be a Unitarian but remain a member of the Church Catholic." The two groups have very different goals and demands of their members -- it's dishonest to pretend otherwise.

"There is no metaphysical Truth."

This is curious as our stories say, exactly, that Jesus is the Truth (and Way and Life).

To say there is no Truth, for a Christian, is to deny Jesus himself.

Why would you want to be in a faith community that weekly affirmed exactly the thing you deny?

It's not a question that says "get out" it's a question that seeks to understand. But more importantly, why would you seek to *change* the community?

I agree with Adrian that honest is best here. I welcome a community that is honest about its faith and lack of it. But if you're going to say "You are wrong in your 2000 years of belief, now, change to suit me" there had better be a reason.

(To state my own lack of orthodoxy: I accept the gospel precept, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." God's grace will work it out... but that's means God will change *me* to his standards, not the other way around. It is grace that let's me see my errors: not point out God's.)

This is an excellent article! I was especially taken with this paragraph: "Some people who hide their true views, or express them within the complexities of theological talk (sounds like one thing but means another) will say they make a necessary compromise, because of a commitment to the wider ideals of their Church and of course there is a collective line to obey, rather like being in cabinet government or in a political party (and look what happens, as at present in the UK, when discipline deserts and different tendencies become far too obvious). The problem is that this encourages duplicity within the very profession where duplicity ought to be absent."

Adrian Worsfold sees the same problem I have seen, which is that a lesson that could be drawn from the Thew Forrester case is that future candidates should not admit what they really think about religion. They should merely parrot forth the creeds and other dry nonsense which has been passed down for centuries. And they should learn to speak theological nonsense too, which would enable them to say one thing and mean another. Rather than merely reject the resurrection of Jesus as an unncessary miracle, it would be better to say "Christ is risen" even if the bones of the historical Jesus be located in some cave. I have much sympathy for this Bultmannian rewrite but at the same time I find it unnecessary.

Tribalism is what church is largely about. Bill says that there must be boundaries, as if anyone were arguing against boundaries. Yes, there are boundaries but arguing for nontheistic positions does not abolish boundaries.

Some are arguing that the people in the pews believe every word of the creeds and liturgy. I am not sure. What polls have been taken? And how would you measure belief in intangibles? And would belief in God be counted as belief if the person is amoral or immoral in most of the ways he or she lives? Or is there any connection between belief the supernatural and ethical conduct?

I am not convinced the average person in the pews is as naive as some would argue. Perhaps they are simply polite to their rector when they compliment their rector's sermon. Perhaps they do not want to upset the clergy that they do not believe many of the things preached at them. And then there are clergy who do not want to upset the congregation with their postmodern views.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Chris, I would not assert there is no metaphyisical Truth. That would be to say that the claim is false. I would rather argue it is nonsense and can neither be affirmed nor denied because it can't possibly be wrong. It reminds of science where there are some theories that are so wrong they are not even wrong. They are not theories because they cannot be rejected if new evidence comes in.

My approach to Christianity is Wittgensteinian in that I do not bother to ask if its knowledge claims are true. I don't see religion as offering any knowledge or facts. I see it merely as offering suggestions as to how to lead an ethical life.

Thew Forrester has not renounced Christianity. Far from it! He has played by the rules.

The question at this point is who gets to define Christianity. If it gets defined narrowly then more liberal types will simply define themselves as nonChristian. Nothing is lost either way. These are merely questions of definition.

Gary Paul Gilbert

It is an amazing argument. I don't agree with X. Therefore, no one really agrees with X. Therefore, no one can affirm X with integrity.

The problem with modernists is that they are never able to see that modernism is itself a tradition and involves a commitment to a particular story.

The thing is, Bill, you can't agree with X, if there is nothing there to agree with.

Of course Gary and I follow an intellectual tradition, whether or not you could describe it with such a general term as Modernism. Gary has studied these things for longer than you've studied theology; I merely look at things with an editor's eye to catch inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and insupportable statements. We are committed an evidential approach. Why do you think we're doing so blindly?

Murdoch

My approach to Christianity is Wittgensteinian in that I do not bother to ask if its knowledge claims are true. ... I see it merely as offering suggestions as to how to lead an ethical life.

What, in your opinion, is the death and resurrection of the Lord about? It seems to me that any response to the Scriptures that leaves out that inconvenient truth is outside the pale.

Robert Goulding

Wow! another thread and the discussion continues. Is this rather like moving down the hall to a different room and going at it again, or taking out to the parking lot? ; )

One problem below the surface in the above discussion seems to me to be an epistemological one. It has to do with what we _mean_ by the word "True."
Some of our uses are easier, such as:

Is it a brute "fact" like, "I have a hand?"
Is it verifiable by experimentation like, "The acceleration of gravity is 9.8m/s2?"
Is it logically consistent: a>b and b>c, therefore a>c ?

The use of "true" or "truth" in a religious philosophical sense, however, is harder to grasp hold of. How about "God exists?" It would not seem that it can be seen as a brute fact. It is not verifiable by experimentation. It involves no logical consistency issue (God could just as easily not exist). It would seem, then that this must then be a matter of opinion. (Like black jelly beans are the best.) Yet, "opinion" also does not seem to do justice to it, as it seems to trivialize it down to the level of "mere whim." Gary concludes, as do some epistemologists, that such a statement cannot be "true" as it is not potentially capable of being proved false and is, therefore, non-sense (better with the hyphen as it makes it less pejorative) and cannot be subject to logical argument. This makes, then, religious language "different" from logical argument, and would seem to require different "rules."

I think that those of us on the more non-theistic side of things might be OK, if we were simply allowed to "stay in the house" and do so honestly. I will fully admit that a "nontheistic" Christianity is a novelty. Christianity itself was once a novelty. The only way that we are ever going to find out if it is a useful way of being a Christian is to "try" it, or allow some of us to "try it." Some of us are comfortable with there being many ways to be Christian, and others see only "Jesus the way the truth and the life" as they know it, and will admit no other alternative to the way it has "always been." To admit something as potentially true that is different from their beliefs logically requires their belief to be "false." To assert the "truth" of two diametrically opposed religious views is unacceptably ambiguous and also therefore of necessity "false."

An Episcopal dean that I know, however, makes the frequent observation that Christianity is full of paradoxes. Even the statement with which we administer the bread / host at communion is itself a logical paradox -- "The body of Christ. The bread of heaven."

Dr. Spong comes in for a lot of criticism on the "edges" of these recent arguments, but I think that, if you read all of his so-far published works carefully, he sees his formulation of a post-modern, non-theistic Christianity as rather "provisional." It seems that some of us are being led or drawn or pushed to "something," but I am far from knowing what, in fullness, that "something" will be. Some of us, however, are trying to continue to live within the community of faith but still to explore in prayer, meditation, discussion and practice, other ways of "being Christian" that might potentially be just as valid as the traditional ways. For those of us "starting off" as Episcopalians or Anglicans, I think that we would like to carry as much of our Episcopal and Anglican "flavor" with us in this journey as we may.

Could the church stand a few "innovator" bishops mixed in with the traditionalists (both true traditionalists and closet innovators)? If the apostolic tradition once delivered to the fathers and transmitted to us over more than 2 millennia of time has lasted this long, I suspect that it would survive a KTF or two (if that is how you see our faith tradition).

At a very deep level, I think, our present practical difficulty is that those who see their faith in more absolute terms of revealed truth cannot conceive of an "alternative" faith as no alternative could possibly be "true." The liberal/pluralist by orientation can possibly see it as not A or B but A and B and maybe C, D, E, F.... Can these differences of viewpoint and epistemology reasonably coexist in a single human-populated entity such as TEC? I am honestly not sure.

*Well*.

I wade into this stream with some trepidation, because it hits close to home, yet in ways different than may seem obvious at first. Much of what follows will be the subject matter of a blog I'll be setting up as I continue to explore these issues in writing, but here's a first stab at them.

First, let me say that my perspective is that of someone who is both (a) an openly gay, progressive Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, cradle Roman Catholic, in discernment of a lifelong sense of vocation to the priesthood, and (b) one who subscribes to Mahayana Buddhist philosophy and indeed has been for years and remains a Buddhist practitioner in the Vajrayana, Dzogchen, and Chan/Zen traditions.

And, based on what I know as of this date, I can't support the Rev. Forrester's consecration as bishop.

But first, let me object to this: "Murdoch, I'm afraid you're showing your bias by claiming that Buddhist practice by a Christian priest reflects "the religious life we live today". That's simply not true of 99% of liturgical Christians in the US. This kind of mindless syncreticism is a feature of the religious practice of upper middle class "seeker" elites, not ordinary Christians in the pews."

I agree that for 99% of Christians in the pews, even just Episcopalians in the pews, Buddhist practice doesn't reflect their religious life. And for sure, much of dreaded "sycretism" is not well thought through. Yet the writer implies that *all* forms of syncretism -- or cross-faith theologizing, as I'd prefer to put it -- are "mindless." Such could not be further from the truth.

I think of the work not just of Merton and Dupuis and even Rahner in seeing Truth in other traditions, but also of Fr. Bede Griffiths, who expressed Christian truth through Hinduized philosophy and ritual.

Specifically in the area of Christian-Buddhist engagement, aside from highly worthy works by both Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama reflecting on Jesus and the Gospels, we have such "syncretists" as Robert Kennedy SJ Sensei and Fr. John P. Keenan (former SJ - gotta love the Jesuits...).

Fr. Kennedy-Sensei is the most prominent of a number of RC priests and nuns who not only have taken Zen vows but are authorized teachers -- even "dharma heirs" -- in recognized Zen lineages, yet remain in good standing with Rome (albeit occasionally strained -- but still valid). Fr. Kennedy has written extensively of what Zen and Christianity offer each other.

Fr. Keenan, former Jesuit and for many years now Episcopal priest as well as professor of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism (now retired), has taken the approach that, as the medieval saying goes, "philosophy is the handmaiden of theology." If that is so, then the classical Greek philosophical categories incorporated into early Christianity are not the heart of the Christian message or the only "handmaiden" that could be employed, and classical Mahayana Buddhist philosophical categories may profitably be employed instead, to yield new understandings of the Gospel, not dependent on those classical Greek categories and definitions. To the extent that modern science and modern philosophy seem more compatible in some ways with classical Mahayana philosophy than with classical Greek philosophy, using Mahayana categories may make the Gospel more approachable for modern people.

So in short, let's not disparage *all* "syncretism" or cross-faith theologizing as inherently "mindless."

Second: That said, in order profitably to engage in such cross-faith theologizing, one really needs to be fluent in both "languages." (All too often, dilettante "seekers" do indeed mix and match traditions and symbolism they really don't have a deep understanding of.) And, to extend the "language" metaphor further, the aim isn't to create a pidgin, it's to be able to understand what the languages have in common and as different, while being open to ways one might inform the other, or a "loan word" could be of use -- without bastardizing either language but rather upholding its own uniqueness.

In that sense, there are certainly ways that the truth claims of Christianity and those of Buddhism could be "read" so as to be contradictory. Yet, imo, there are also perfectly "orthodox" ways of reading both traditions such that their truth claims are *not* contradictory. What Jesus did on the cross and out of the tomb and what Shakyamuni did under the bodhi tree are not necessarily competing, mutually exclusive truth claims, and the questions each tradition seeks to answer are not necessarily the same -- although they can certainly be construed in that way. Such potential compatibility, though, seems nonexistent between, say, Christianity and Islam, the respective truth claims of which -- probably because the religions developed in closer contact and from common origins -- are more thoroughly directly contradictory.

For myself, though, the most intellectually -- and spiritually -- honest approach I attempt to follow is to honor the integrity of each tradition, and not muddle these "languages" in their "grammar," and only in explicit conversations about cross-faith theologizing will I even use "loan words." If I am to follow both paths with integrity, I must be able to speak both "standard Christian" and "standard Buddhist" in ways understandable to the other speakers, and not even ascribe my own idiosyncratic meaning to a word others will understand differently.

Third: The whole "lay ordination" thing is way overblown. Don't even liken it, as one poster did above, to confirmation, unless you think an Eagle Scout ceremony is also akin to confirmation and necessarily removes one from Christianity. It's a taking of vows that, in content, can be interpreted both as contradicting and as not contradicting Christianity; the vows alone don't provide an answer as to leaving Christianity, the larger context does.

Fourth: Christian and Buddhist though I be, I was troubled by reading some of the Rev. Forrester's writings and liturgical drafting because -- contrary to the "respect the language's uniqueness" approach I described above -- some passages read to me as basically a Dzogchen or Zen text transposed into a Christian frame. Yet that alone would not, imo, be sufficient for a bishop or a standing committee -- assuming they were fluent enough in Buddhism to actually evaluate whether his teaching of Christianity was being diluted -- to withhold consent. Indeed, placed within the framework of Rite III, much of the Dzogchen/Zen-tinged language might actually still be a coherent "creole" that was still essentially Christian.

But the greater the freedom to theologize and explore new ways of coming to understand the heart of the Gospel, it seems the greater the need *not* to alter our common prayer beyond the bounds set collectively by the Church -- i.e., the authorized texts of the BCP and (with episcopal permission) EOW, plus any *bishop-authorized* Rite III experiments (kept in the time slots the Church in General Convention has authorized). Good catholic order in such matters is not *antithetical* to freeranging theologizing; rather, it is the very means by which such theologizing is *possible*, for without such common (and collectively agreed) reference points, centripetal force would fling us all outward, with "do it yourself, however you alone think best" followed by each congregation and each cleric and ultimately, each individual. That's not the Body of Christ, that's a bunch of organic molecules trying to disintegrate.

So, as a Christian and as a Buddhist, I defend *some* "sycretism," I uphold the value of cross-faith theologizing, and I support its insights *not* being unilaterally adopted in the place of the collectively ordained Common Prayer, but rather, as with all "innovations," being submitted to testing and debate and evaluation by the wider Church -- especially when it comes to the dominical sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, the primary bonds that define the sacramental life of the Church.

And viewed from that perspective, the Dzogchenesque modified creed used by the Rev. Forrester in baptismal rites, and similar eucharistic revisions, were just a bridge too far even for me.

For what it's worth,
Viriato da Silva, the Mahayana Anglo-Catholic Latin

Robert, Different people define "Christianity" differently. Whether someone considers me a Christian or not does not concern me. A demythologized version of the resurrection, as Dorothee Soelle says, is that the struggle for justice goes on, la lucha continua. The Roman State executed a community organizer and yet the church for centuries condoned capital punishment. One must go on living as if it mattered to stand up for justice. This faith is similar to that of a scientist working on the assumption that the universe can be figured out.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Bill, you seem to have confused modernism with postmodernism. Modernism tends toward the view that all religions are different paths to the same end. Postmodernism, following Wittgnenstein, does not assume everything that has been called religion has anything in common. Buddhism, for example, may be defined as religious or non-religious because it is nontheistic. That is part of Buddhism's appeal to people in North America and Europe, its ambiguity for Christians and post-Christians.

Maybe you are the modernist because you seem to assume that an article of faith is a fact. I do not assume a doctrine is factual but see it more as an imperative or action-indicator.

For example, to call Jesus the Christ, as in the liturgy, is not necessarily to affirm a fact but rather expresses an act of worship, as R. M. Hare said. Hare was influenced by Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin.

Paul, for example, after his conversion, did not have any more facts on Jesus than he did before. The difference was he began to worship and he stopped persecuting followers of the Way. He also visited different communities and wrote them letters in which he corrected them on minute details. Again I am channeling/appropriating Hare.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Thanks much to Dr. Shy for his contribution to these discussions. He can talk theology with those for whom it's their only language, but in a way that speaks to me, too.

Yes, Truth is indeed a problem. If you possess Truth, then people can't just disagree with you but must be in Error. Truth and Error can't co-exist.

Christians and Jews couldn't just disagree on the definition of "Messiah" -- the continued existence of the Jews cast doubt on the Truth claimed by the Christians, and the Jews were made to pay heavily for daring to disagree. Gays are absent from the tradition, and our present visibility -- and viability -- are a judgment on the Church's claim to Truth, even if we do nothing but be seen to exist. (We, and our relationships, always existed, but could be kept filed under Shame and Sin.)

Where it has the power, Truth is a license to kill. Fortunately, in a pluralistic society, it only has the power to shout down people who disagree and to draw boundaries to keep them at an impotent distance.

Again, thanks for your kind and moderate voice, Dr. Shy.

Murdoch Matthew

I am not at all confused about the difference between modernism and postmodernism. I was using modernism in the sense of the nineteenth and early twentieth century heresy that held theology captive by means of an uncritical acceptance of Enlightenment norms. I am certainly in favor of critical appropriations of aspects of the "emancipatory project" (David Tracy) of Enlightenment, such as notions of pluralistic democracy and universal human rights. I don't think such modern institutions as the nation state have been very good at fulfilling the promises of the Enlightenment. Social contract theory, for example, seems much more mythological than the biblical narrative.

Much of what passes for postmodernism is just a hypermodern species of the modern. In one sense, we are all postmodern. It is just a question of what comes after modern. That is an open question among so called postmodernists themselves. The best forms of postmodernism are open to the premodern, including theology and "spiritual exercises." (Pierre Hadot)

When it comes to questions of philosophy, I am more or less a Thomist. Quite open to the Kantian turn to the subject and even some forms of the postmodern turn to language. Wittgenstein's critique of Augustine on meaning, for example, is helpful, but only to a point. I'm still a critical realist when it comes to questions of meaning and truth. All this is perfectly defensible (not necessarily but at least possibly true and with arguments to back up each point), but not really that interesting to me.

I would maintain that a viable Christian philosophy would have to uphold some version of a realist theory of truth. I don't assume any kind of modernist theory that truth has to do with "facts." This is tied up, often, with theses about verification and falsification that I would not uphold.

But I do believe that we are asserting something real about God, ourselves, and the world when we confess the Creed. There is an obvious difference between "he suffered under Pontius Pilate" and "Light from light, God from God, true God from true God." Any reference to God puts us in the realm of the doctrine of analogy. Still, what is affirmed is true, in the sense of adaequatio intellectus ad rem. The human intellect is oriented toward an object that exceeds its natural powers. Yet even unaided by the light of grace it can affirm certain propositions about God. The most interesting things we affirm all depend on divine revelation. The words really signify but we don't know how. The sensus fidelium and practices of interpretation of Scripture and contemplative prayer have a real role to play in conforming the mind to God.

In the end, Wittgenstein's efforts to let the fly out of the bottle are only fully convincing to those who have been trapped in the bottle in the first place. As was the case with Wittgenstein himself in his earlier period. That's not to say that there's nothing of value in the later work. The critique of Augustine in the Investigations is, as I said, in many ways compelling.

To refuse to consider any sort of transcendent referent to our God-talk seems to me to keep us captive to modernist (and postmodernist) cultural narcissism and nihilism. At least KTF doesn't do that. He has a metaphysics. So does any Buddhist or Christian or Christian who finds meaning in certain forms of Buddhist practice and teaching.

There is an implicit metaphysics, malgre lui, even in the later Wittgenstein, but it is a greatly impoverished one.

To quote one of my favorite Anglican theological schools, Monty Python's Flyng Circus:

"MY BRAIN HURTS!"

Marshall Scott

Bill writes (among other fascinating things):

"Any reference to God puts us in the realm of the doctrine of analogy. Still, what is affirmed is true, in the sense of adaequatio intellectus ad rem."

"The most interesting things we affirm all depend on divine revelation."

"The sensus fidelium and practices of interpretation of Scripture and contemplative prayer have a real role to play in conforming the mind to God."

If I am understanding you correctly, Bill, what you are suggesting, in the Thomist sense, is that the mind, the person at prayer, the church in corporate (sum of individuals or majority?) interacts with the "object" of God and in that interaction is changed/influenced/enlightened. Inasmuch as the object "God" might be said to possess certain attributes (at least in the sense perhaps of the Cappodocians of "energiae" rather than "ousia" of God) we can know something "true" about God. Ultimately, this would suggest that religious "experience" informs us about God.

I can, however, suggest criticisms of this view (and I am not necessarily espousing any ideas nor refuting yours on any strongly held personal conviction). First, that the assumption underlies this that the "object" of the intellect is "real" and not just a delusion. We know, for example, that some neuroscience research suggests that, the more we "interact" with the "idea" of God, the more "real" that idea becomes to us. Does this say more about the "reality" of God or the foibles of our cognitive function?

Secondly, the object "God" would seem to have the characteristics of a "universal." If, then, the intellect interacts with the object "God" and can then say things about this "real" thing, how then do we explain the _diversity_ of religious experience and the very different conclusions/intellectual formulations that, presumably equally serious religious practitioners and communities, generate based on this interaction. ? If their conclusions are contradictory, what does this say about the "object" of the intellect (i.e. what does it say about God)? Is God contradictory, or is it simply a fantasy generated in different forms by different minds with different presumptions poorly understood?

If we appeal thus strongly to experience, then should we rather say "This is how it seems to me/us" rather than "This is true?"

Where do I stand? I stand in abeyance of judgement. I have made a conscious decision to assume that it may be that religious practice may lead to some experience of a transcendent (or I would say better, numinous) "some-thing." The only way to "know" for me will be to find that the "knowing" has enriched my life and those of others who know me. We shall see...

Jeffrey,

Thanks for continuing this conversation.

I would say that God is not a thing. God may be a substance, but God is unlike created substances insofar as there is no composition in God (e.g. between form and matter, or even between ens and esse/actus essendi).

God is the transcendent ground of every human act of knowing and loving. We may conclude from an analysis of creation or from transcendental analysis of our own acts of knowing and loving, that such a mysterious transcendent ground exists.

We may also, on the basis of the historical self-communication of God, in the history of grace and above all in the incarnate Word, come to know God personally, but only in such a way that God remains mystery. The Nicene Creed, for example, is a summary of who the Church takes God to be, on the basis of this historical self-communication. At the heart of the Creed lies the apostolic kerygma (Christ has died, Christ is risen), and the two great dogmas of Trinity and Incarnation. Creedal Christians believe that the Church was guided by the Holy Spirit in the confession of this true faith.

I would submit that most forms of personal knowledge are like this. They involve trust in a persons character based on historical experience with that person. This is consistent with doubt. Modern philosophy in general has a huge problem overcoming solipsism. There are different ways to do it. If we concede too much to modernity, as I think many postmodernists have, we will never really be able to affirm our knowledge of the so called "external world" (is it really external to us, and if so, in what sense? At a minimum, it is possible to take this metaphor too far) let alone the existence of other persons or the transcendent ground of reality. (None of which is to say that the Kantian turn to the subject wasn't brilliant and in some sense called for by what went before.)

I don't for a minute deny that other traditions have some access to truth. They may (but not necessarily) even have important things to teach us about ethics, about reality, and about the ultimate mystery we name God. But I am confident that the heart of our own tradition is true in a realist sense. To affirm the contrary would be falsehood.

I would be just as uncomfortable with some crude forms of theism, unqualified by any apophaticism, picturing God as a particularly big and powerful thing--as you are. None of the Fathers held to this form of theism. I do think that the attempt to be a Christian without some kind of referent for the term God, who is both personal and good, is deeply confused.

If that's what I believed, I'd rather stay in on Sunday morning with some coffee and a copy of the Times.

I'm not sure how far apart we actually are. I do think we differ in our preferred language a bit. Unlike some, I don't think this is fundamentally about words. It is about the reality we talk about by means of words. Some ways of talking about that reality are more adequate than others.

Gary,

Mockery isn't a very good philosophical argument.

Yes, I've read the Investigations cover to cover. Several times. I'm very familiar with that text. Just cause I don't buy it hook, line, and sinker doesn't mean that I haven't understood it and learned from it.

I have some sympathies with the radical orthodoxy crowd, which should be apparent enough from what I've written above. My own philosophical position is some species of Thomism, probably closest to that of Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ

The denial of metaphysics has always been a profound mistake. It doesn't mean that twentieth century thinkers who denied it (not all the best thinkers did) were just spinning their wheels. They made interesting moves to solve a problem that wasn't really there. In the late medieval and early modern period, philosophy begins to get off the track, leading to the spectacularly interesting errors of Kant. We can't undo that trajectory and must learn from and respond to it.

A cult? Prayer Book Catholicism is hardly a cult. Roman? Really???

Liberal Catholicism is a very well founded tendency within Anglican Divinity, perhaps the dominant one for the past two centuries. Ramsey certainly argued thus in his Hale lectures, "From Gore to Temple."

Dear Bill, I apologize for having personalized this encounter/nonencounter. But still you have not convinced me you have read Wittgenstein. You have not cited specific parts of the Investigations or even key terms. I would never presume to have understood or learned from Wittgenstein. I draw on certain aspects of The Philosophical Investigations, in particular the notion of a language-game. But Wittgenstein, like Nietzsche, is a philosopher of the future, someone who cannot and probably must not be understood because understanding presumes to know. The marks on the page that people like Ludwig and Freddy left are ultimately resistant to hermeneutics. That is what attracts me to a philosopher who was very sympathetic to Christianity and yet rejected theology. Nietzsche is a similar aporia in that, as Karl Jaspers said, he can easily be read as a Christian atheist. Nietzsche's affirmation of chance is similar to providence in Kierkegaard. And Kierkegaard's faith is close to radical doubt. Ambivalence interests me, how someone can both love and hate at the same time, without deciding either way, as if suspension were the mode of being or nonbeing.

Communication probably only happens when people do not understand each other. Our failure to meet on theology may be a sort of meeting/nonmeeting.

I have read some of the Radical Orthodoxy people and have yet to be moved by their approach. I have not been able to follow how in Milbank transubstantiation is supposed to take us out of the infinite delay of the linguistic sign. Makes no sense to me.

Twenty years ago I would have cosigned for liberal Catholicism but the aftermath of the failure of Affirming Catholicism does not make me hopeful. There was a time when a liberal Catholicism seemed possible, when it seemed as if the Episcopal Church could be liberal in both theology and its teachings on sexuality.

I would only affirm a catholicism which acknowledges its impossibility, failure to be.

Richard Holloway, one of the founders of Affirming Catholicism in the United Kingdom, is now more Nietzschean than Catholic. Murdoch and I have read Holloway and have followed his movement through Affirming Catholicism and now out into a more liberal nondogmatic philosophy.

Even if it worked, liberal Catholicism most likely would never have many adherents.

I am not into denying metaphysics. I simply don't do it, either way.

Part of our not communicating is that when you say something is well founded, I run because postmodernists prefer abysses to foundations. A foundation implies stasis, certainty, whereas an abyss opens up possibilities and impossibilities.

In the end, I prefer facts, textual details, rhetoric, social activism, to theological systems.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Jeffrey, I like your statement: "The liberal/pluralist by orientation can possibly see it as not A or B but A and B and maybe C, D, E, F.... Can these differences of viewpoint and epistemology reasonably coexist in a single human-populated entity such as TEC? I am honestly not sure." My answer to this is that in religion there is no possibility of error and that nobody is really asserting anything in the language-game of religion, as Wittgenstein says. Even if they intend to say something, their language has gone on a holiday. A God who takes care of us no matter what horrific event may befall us is part of a language-game in which "take care of" and "look after" have been emptied of their common meanings. To say "Christ" is to express an attitude of worship toward a particular person and does not necessarily make any factual claims. Without factual claims, there can be no logical contradiction among the different religions: there is no need for reconciliation in the form of a theology of religious pluralism. And there is certainly no need to convert others to one's religion if none of them says anything other than a general "Be decent with each other."

Religious pluralism continues theology by other means as when it asks whether other religions "save." If "salvation" is a piece of the language-game of Christianity it would make no sense to look for it elsewhere, not because other religions are deficient but rather because they have other grammars. Some of the wisdom religions speak of wisdom, for example. And some philosophies say there should be no disciples, ever, because disciples presume to know the wishes of the master.

Most of the Christians in North America do not use a Prayer Book, for example, and get by quite well without one. A mere two-million Episcopalians in the United States use one. I like the Prayer Book but I do not see it as a necessity for worship. Those who use one and those who do not do not contradict each other but merely express different attitudes of worship.

So I would say "it" is about A, B, C, D, E, etc. and that religions cannot logically contradict each other ossibly contradict because none of them make factual claims.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Some quick comments that may be of help, --or not.

1. Truth is a quality of statements. A statement is said to be true when it is in accord with an experience. Whose? as many as possible. Thus "Jesus Christ is Divine and Human" as a statement, may be true or false. But it is true or false for people who already have a concepts like "divine" and "human." If you do not share that concepts the statement is not true/false, but it unintelligible.

2. Meaning is always meaning-to-someone. It does not exist by itself. It is a given person´s connection between a statement and his or her experience. When we say, "the meaning of Eucharist is..." we are implying "to us" --the Christian community (or factions within it). The Eucharist cannot have a menaing for, say, Confucians. Or beter, a Confucian might understand our Euc harist as a rite centering on personal development and improvement. Thus the Eucharist is meaningful only in the context of Christianity. It is not intelligible outside that context, except under the rubric of "a religious rite" --if the speaker has the concept, "religious rite".

3. Christian orthodoxy, just like divine revelation did not stop developing with a particular culture or at a particular place or time. It is always in a process of development. Thus, as Gary points out above, it cannot consist of only the parroting acceptable formulae, but must answer to other, more demanding criteria.

4. Christian teaching no less than Christian worship is always being re-incarnated in a given new time and culture. This is not a new idea. We have been doing this from the beginning. Blame Paul.

5. The criterion for the orthodoxy of new expressions of worship and theology thus cannot be whether they trade in familiar formulae and keep us comfortable, but whether they embody our Tradition ("What has been believed by all [Christians] in all times and all places" --Vincent of Lerins,) This core Tradition is very powerful, and very solid. It is also very small. It does not include: sanctus bells, vestments, Marian apparitions, sola scriptura, Arminian theology, Jansenist theology, the worship of relics, theological explanations of limbo, the theology of relics, --I could go on ad nauseam, but you get my point.

6. The idea that Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer and die on the cross in order to pay a debt for our sins to a demanding Lord (Father) is Anselm´s, c. 1100 AD, and is cast in (medieval) terms of the relationship between a Lord and his serfs. Before that we tried to get our minds around the mystery of the cross in other ways. Anselmian atonement thus is NOT something always believed by all Christians in all places, and it is NOT a core element in Christian Tradition.

Most detractors of Forrester are simply assuming that he is not orthodox because they do not see familiar formulations in his writings.They need to do their home work and look again at the history of theological formulations, their development, and the very extensive homework done by Forrester to express the "unchanging truths of our faith" in new, and anciently-rooted ways.

The scandal here is not Forrester, but the theological shallowness of his detractors.

None of these questions is going to be settled in a days-old comment thread... But I cannot agree that the scandal is "the theological shallowness of [Forrester's] detractors." Some of the points here are very poorly thought through:

1) "Truth is a quality of statements." But as Christians we also believe (or, at least, have until very recently...) in a transcendent source of Truth itself -- beyond any particular statements. Similarly (2), for most Christians the universe is not meaningless, or only meaningful with respect to particular interpreters of meaning, but is imbued with meaning "from the beginning" ("In the beginning was the Logos") -- and that transcendent source of truth and meaning became incarnate as Jesus Christ. To adopt an ironic, postmodern attitude to Truth is to jest with Pilate, "What is truth?"

5) No, none of these embodies the Tradition. How about the Creeds -- they have a pretty good claim to present that small core of orthodoxy, don't they?

6) No, an Anselmian theory of atonement is not an essential part of the tradition. But that does not mean that atonement per se is irrelevant. This is where Forrester and others in N Michigan (http://www.upepiscopal.org/daressalaam.html) depart widely from orthodoxy, in claiming that human beings are already saved, already Christ, but are simply unaware of it. The death and resurrection of Christ did something, and our embracing of that truth changes our relationship with God, however we are to explain it. As Christ himself said, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45); and the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews are rife with the notion that Christ's sacrifice was in some way efficacious for us. Personally, I find the Anselmian theory repellent -- but I leave the "mechanics" of atonement as a mystery beyond my understanding. God's ways are not mine.

Robert Goulding.

Reading this thread I am reminded that condescension is not a charism.

Jim,

I apologize if I sound condescending. What i feel is indignation and profound disappointment at the theological ability of the leadership of my church. And to top it all, our seminaries are in financial crisis!

I´d like to know how some folks envision the development of worship and theology. Some options ocurr to me:

a) No development. No change in either

b) Development only by bodies appointed by GC, and for evaluation and approval by GC, using very strict criteria.

c) Interim development at the local level under the supervision of the ordinary (this is actually happening in TEC more than we realize).

d) Interim development at the parish level under the supervision of the Vestry, while the bishop looks the other way. I kid you not.

e) Occasional exceptional changes due to pastoral needs.

Can anyone else think of other possibilities?

I ask this because it seems to me that in this thread the core issue is the basis for evaluating change and adaptation in worship and theology.

Robert, we are very close to agreeing. I don´t however understand what you mean by the truth of Transcendence. I believe you mean something like "Transcendence exists (whether we know it or not)." And personally I would grant you that without hesitation. I don´t see how my understanding of truth as a property of statements is ironic or even postmodernist.

The creeds do embody the Tradition. But whether they can be apprehended, and by whom, is the real question here. To what extent can/should/ may we recast them in contemporary, local ways? Is, for example, Source, Incarnate Word and Holy Breath an orthodox re-formulation of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?"

As to your third point, an awful lot of Saints, headed by Teresa of Avila, would say precisely and without equivocation that Christ is at the core of the soul, --to use her language in The Interior Castle. Ditto John of the Cross and many others.

I would never say that the cross was not salvific. You are right to point to the NT. But how it is salvific, is a mystery, IMO.

I haven't any position on Forrester's theology, not having studied it, but a comment on Mark Harris's blog Preludium swung my feelings against him. A commenter said she'd read prayers he'd done for the baptismal liturgy, and they were badly written ! Theology be damned -- the prose standards of Cranmer must be upheld!

Murdoch Matthew

Practially speaking, saying "transcendence exists" is not that different from saying that "truth" within the context of the institutional church is whatever the current consensus says it is. If enough important officials say it is time to change, then things are changed. Many strands of Judaism have an easier time with change because they simply require a certain number of rabbis to change their opinion on how to read key texts of the tradition. Reform Judaism moved very easily on same-sex relationships, and even conservative Judaism (the Jewish equivalent of Christian mainliners) has moved in the direction of equality for all. How ironic that Christianity, which is supposed to specialize in love, fails to move on to recognize committed same-sex relationships!

As for condescension not being a charism, Jim, it seems to me that the traditional story of the incarnation is that our Lord condescended to be born of flesh and blood. That other meaning of "condescension" seems very much part of the tradition.

I would cosign much of what Juan Oliver says. A tradition must be able to speak in the language that people use today or else it will be relegated to the museum. I part company with him on transcendence.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Yeah Murdoch!

Apropos of nothing, Many years ago I was totally stumped when Bill Countryman, then NT prof at CDSP suggested to me that Anglican spirtuality is fundamentally aesthetic!

My not-so-polite take on that: One does not convince an Anglican by using reason, but by infering that she is acting in bad taste. :)

I'm new to this site, and a relatively new Episcopalian, but I'm extremely interested in this discussion because my 'journey to Canterbury' came via an extended detour in Paris (i.e., French post-structuralism).

I think the discussions of Forrester, as well as the debate over the 'boundaries' of Christianity and/or Anglicanism, pertain directly to my own spiritual journey, including a survey of church history, and of the evolution of present-day denominations/churches in Europe and north America.

I still value my philosophical training, and the work of Derrida, Foucault, Levinas, Agamben, Cixous, Lyotard, et al. is still a major part of my thinking. I read Wittgenstein, but he really represents the analytic school of philosophy (esp. phil. of language) that the Continental philosophy of my background is typically defined in opposition to.

Although I could get into the debate over Wittgenstein, language-games, modern vs. post-modern, etc., and enjoy it immensely, I primarily want to address the position taken by Gary and Murdoch (or, at least, my interpretation thereof).

It also goes to the heart of the article which occasioned this discussion.

The debate seems to be over the degree of conformity to certain standards or doctrines within the church, or the degree to which a unity of belief within a community of faith is desirable or necessary.

This question raised certain second-order questions on the nature of religion, truth, reality, etc.

While these questions are interesting, I think the issue involved in the question of Forrester's consecration, as well as the points Bill was making about the 'standards of the community,' as well as the comments of Fr Chris and Robert, relate less to the truth-value of Christian doctrine, than questions of, for lack of a better term, 'ecclesiatical polity.'

Whether or not you believe in 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,' instituted by God as the mystical Body of Christ on Earth, I think we can agree that the visible manifestations of the church, whether we see them as branches of the Churhc Catholic, or as separate but related religious institutions, are intentional communities or voluntary associations of humans gathered together, organized and constituted for a common purpose and united by common belief.

Now, you're free to take a modernist, sociological view of religion as 'useful,' fulfilling a needed function of communal identification and social control; a Wittgensteinian view of religion as a shared 'language-game;' or a post-structuralist view of religion as a metanarrative. But in any event, to truly understand the meaning of a faith for its adherents, it's necessary to first encounter it 'on its own terms.'

In the case of TEC, I think it's interesting that the very name of the church refers to its polity, i.e., being overseen by the episcopacy. Furthermore, TEC is a province of the Anglican Communion, which considers itself a branch of the Church Catholic.

The fundamental question in the debate here, both in terms of the Forrester election, the above article, and these comments, is what (if anything) it means to be Episcopalian, and, by extension, Anglican.

I think the beauty of Anglicanism can be traced to the Elizabethan Settlement; the Queen's desire 'not to make windows into men's souls;' the principle of unity in essentials, diversity in incidentals.

As such, I would say that to be Episcopalian/Anglican means at least to continue to uphold the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, the 39 Articles (as amended), and the Creeds. It also means to maintain 'Common Prayer,' i.e., a shared liturgical tradition, but I'd consider that almost secondary.

What I want to suggest is that there are as many ways to be an Episcopalian as there are Episcopalians, and that there's nothing wrong with learning from, and respecting, other philosophical and (perhaps) faith traditions.

But only to a point.

I rather consider myself a post-structuralist/postmodern Christian. I consider all texts (even sacred ones) deconstructable, I think Derrida is absolutely right when he equates metaphysics with 'ontotheology,' I just diverge when it comes to the question of whether that's a problem (if God exists, many of the problems in Derrida/Heidegger reslove, a la Levinas). But I don't see this philosophy as incompatible with Christianity, just with its fundamentalist interpretations.

Likewise, I think Buddhism can teach us alot about meditation, the sanctity of life, awareness, etc.

Where the two are compatible, I see no problem with combining both traditions. It's not syncretism until you try to resolve contradictions between the two by synthesizing incompatible doctrines.

But Gary, your 'Wittgensteinian Christianity' is a problem, not because of teh objective validity of either Wittgenstein or Christianity, but because your usage isn't faithful to either, and ends up being poorly Wittgensteinian, and not Christian at all. I don't mean that as a polemic, but I'm afraid it seems to be the case.

Putting in parentheses for the moment the question of 'metaphysical Truth,' whether or not the claims of Christianity actually refer to an external, objective reality, let's look at Chrisitanity as a language game.

In the language-game of Christianity, in this case the Episcopal Church, we pray, recite the creeds, sing hymns, receive the sacraments of baptism and communion, sharing a common liturgy. One of the beautiful things about being an Episcopalian, is that I don't have to understand just how Christ is present in the Eucharist. I can believe any number of things about that. I don't have to understand how baptism effects the remission of sins. But through the Eucharist, God feeds us spiritually, and through baptism, the holy spirit cleanses us of original sins and incorporates us into the mystical body of Christ. In this language-game, baptism is induction into the game, the Creeds describe something that is necessary to the constitution of the community of participants in the particular language-game.

The problem with... well, to borrow a term from Marxism, 'vulgar Wittgensteinians' (and I would include a large number of contemporary analytic philosophers in that category, I'm not coining a phrase for the sake of an epithet), is that they try to analyze a 'language game' without regard for the rules of the game. Each 'language-game,' metanarrative, etc., has an internal logic without which the game falls apart. So if you're going to church each week, reciting the Nicene Creed while beleiving it's meaningless, you aren't even playing the game in good faith.

This refusal to play by the rules ends in a failure to understand the language-game, what it means for its participants... If you can't in good faith affirm the Baptismal Covenant, how can you in good faith call yourself an Episcopalian, and/or Christian?

Moreover, why would you want to identify with a faith tradition whose faith you do not share (a language game whose rules you refuse to follow, in which you effectively refuse to participate)?

That's what I don't understand. The church should have room for all who search, question, are on a journey of faith. But if you deny the basics, you deny Christ as God incarnate, you deny the need for salvation and just want to be a good person, why not join your local ethical society? And as for Forrester... I'm glad he's seeking truth, whence it might come. But a bishop of the Episcopal Church has a responsibility to shepherd others toward Christ (hence the crozier). If he's seeking his answers outside the church, he should be welcome as a member, but should be shepherded, not shepherding.

pax vobiscum,

Jason Lewis

Jason, The tradition cannot cite itself to justify itself, as you seem to be doing when you say that one must believe a creed if one is to recite it. Otherwise, one is not playing the language game. I am interested in the boundary between playing and not playing and what defense mechanisms come into play when an institution insists that one play the game. What repressions occur in the theology game? What repressions occur when so-called continental philosophy rejects analytic or analytic refuses to engage with literature à la continental philosophy?

The question I see here is the use of the word "believe," its grammar. You make it sound very easy to answer the question of whether one believes in a prayer that one recites. It rather depends how one defines "believe." The performative aspects of "believe" are very ambiguous. "Believe" could simply be like a promise, a looking to the future, an act which in a sense cannot happen because the future has not happened but is to come. One is at the limit of sense.

I have been influenced by Derrida, who said he "rightly passes for an atheist."

There are no clear answers here. One may see a sign and decide to follow it without any possible verification. Wittgenstein said in a conversation with Bouwsma that there are traffic signs and lights in the city but when one goes into the country there is darkness. One may get lost and decide that something looks like a sign and decide to follow it.

Bouwsma said this answer from Wittgenstein was not very illuminating. I don't think it was intended to be.

Gary Paul Gilbert