I think you've posed a false dichotomy: core doctrine is important, but "important" does not mean "not open for debate." My reading of the Acts of the Apostles indicates we've wrestled with this "pinch" for quite a few years now.
(editor's note: we need your name next time, pilgrim.)

I think Bishop Kimsey has misread Bishop Briednethal. The latter did not suggest that there was only one theory of atonement and that everyone had to agree with his. Rather, he was pointing out the bishop-elect has an inadequate understanding of the atonement. They are not the same thing.

Nor is it helpful to equate every holding of our leadership accountable to the "doctrine, discipline, and worship of this church" to the Inquisition.

It is very curious to see Bishop Kimsey attempt to rehabilitate Pelagius whose moral rigorism would appall most Episcopalians for its lack of grace and charity. It appalled Augustine.

Finally, since it has been brought up before, I wonder just what it is in Irenaeus that Bishop Kimsey finds at odds with Augustine (or Bishop Briedenthal's concerns). One does not have to look hard to find where Irenaeus and Kevin Thew Forrester contradict each other.

Following is but a sampling of Irenaeus' teaching on atonement from Proof of the Apostolic Preaching from the Ancient Christian Writers series published by Paulist Press:

So He united [humanity] with God and brought about a communion of God and [humanity], we being unable in any otherwise to have part in incorruptibility, had it not been for his coming to us." p. 67-68

So by the obedience, whereby He obeyed unto death, hanging on the tree, He undid the old disobedience wrought in the tree [the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden]. p. 69

[God the Father] sent the creative Word, who, when He came to save us, put Himself in our position, and in the same situation in which we lost life, and he loosed the prison-bonds, and His light appeared and dispelled darkness in the prison, and He sanctified our birth and abolished death, loosingsame bonds by which we were held. p. 71-72

And judgement has been taken off those who believe in Him, and they are no more subject to it; and the judgement, which is to come by fire, will be the perdition of those who did not believe, towards the end of this world. p. 93

I think Bishop Kimsey has misread Bishop Briednethal. The latter did not suggest that there was only one theory of atonement and that everyone had to agree with his. Rather, he was pointing out the bishop-elect has an inadequate understanding of the atonement. They are not the same thing.

Elucidate please, Matt (I'm having trouble seeing the difference).

"Inadequate" for what?

JC Fisher

JC,

If I ask a basketball coach what defensive scheme she plans to use, she might answer in several ways, any of which might be adequate depending on the strengths of the opponent, e.g., man-to-man, one of several zone configurations, full-court press, etc.

Having attended Indiana University while Bobby Knight was coach, I have a decided preference for man-to-man, but I can appreciate the validity of the others.

But, if you tell me that your defensive strategy is to tackle whoever on the opposing team has the ball, I would say that is inadquate. In fact, it suggests you are trying to play a different game altogether.

That is what I take to be the point of Bishop Briedenthal's objection to the bishop-elect of Northern Michigan. It is not that there is only one valid way to understand the atonement wrought by God in Christ, but that there are some that are inadequate.

Inadequate as measured against the witness of scripture taken as a whole and inadequate measured by the language we use in our common worship which is the measure of our belief.

Bishop Kimsey seems to stand for a broader, more refined Anglicanism which sadly seems to be disappearing. There was a time when an intellectual such as Bennett Sims could be a Bishop. Cultured people who were not terribly religious could at least respect a church which respected learning. I, too, wonder what the next litmus test shall be.

Gary Paul Gilbert

This is a lamentable letter that shows a profound misunderstanding of Irenaeus. It's embarrassing that such a letter could be written by a bishop of the Church.

Central to Irenaeus' teaching is the rule of faith, the public preaching of the apostles preserved in the open witness of the churches. This is very similar to Bishop Breidenthal's appeal to the grammar of faith. A bishop is an apostle, a witness to the death and resurrection of the Lord. If you can't proclaim this and other elements of the apostolic faith with integrity, you shouldn't take the job. Orthodoxy is indeed a big tent, but there are some things outside the tent. Breidenthal has made a very persuasive case that Fr. Forrester is outside the tent. He is no Irenaeus.

There's nothing wrong with being an intellectual. Breidenthal himself certainly fits that mould. Denying central aspects of the faith ought to disqualify one from becoming a bishop (or priest or deacon). To be honest, I'm not sure I could present someone with Forrester's Christology for confirmation. When I catechize, I do not present any article of the Apostles Creed, or any other part of the Baptismal Covenant, as optional.

There are perfectly orthodox Christologies that stress theosis and the Incarnation as saving event. None of them would deny the reality of sin and the need for atonement.

The Prayer Book Catechism stresses vicarious offering and sacrifice (not penal subtitution). The liturgy of the Easter Vigil stresses Christ the Victor and a theology of blessed exchange: "to redeem a slave you gave a Son." This is the lex orandi that shapes our belief on atonement, without committing us to any one given theory. The New Testament has several different theories and a bishop ought to be able to incorporate several different strands of them into his or her teaching.

I myself believe in the universal, cosmic significance of Incarnation and have a strong sense of union with God. But the incarnation climaxes in death and resurrection, and we are in fact delivered from sin by the grace and power of Jesus Christ. Incarnation means incarnation in this particular man, with this particular history, and that every aspect of this history is for us and for our salvation.

The forgiveness of sins is central enough that it is an article of the Apostles' Creed. It is also found in the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.

To be a bit more charitable to the good bishop: his remarks may just betray a selective use of certain themes in Irenaeus (akin to Forrester's selective use of Eastern Orthodox theology?) or a misunderstanding of what is being alleged by Bishop Breidenthal: he certainly seems to be (willfully?) misreading the initial letter.

The removal of Fr. Forrester's sermons from the website remains deeply disturbing. Why not stand by what he preached? Again, this flies in the face of Irenaeus' emphasis on public, exoteric proclamation.

For example, can Fr. Forrester affirm the ideas of redemption and captivity present in Against Heresies 5.1.1, which also speaks of communion with God and bestowal of the gift of immortality?

1. FOR in no other way could we have learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become man. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father, except His own proper Word. For what other person "knew the mind of the Lord," or who else "has become His counsellor?"(2) Again, we could have learned in no other way than by seeing our Teacher, and hearing His voice with our own ears, that, having become imitators of His works as well as doers of His words, we may have communion with Him, receiving increase from the perfect One, and from Him who is prior to all creation. We--who were but lately created by the only best and good Being, by Him also who has the gift of immortality, having been formed after His likeness (predestinated, according to the prescience of the Father, that we, who had as yet no existence, might come into being), and made the first-fruits of creation(1)--have received, in the times known beforehand, [the blessings of salvation] according to the ministration of the Word, who is perfect in all things, as the mighty Word, and very man, who, redeeming us by His own blood in a manner consonant to reason, gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity. And since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own, but by means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction. Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh,(2) and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God,--all the doctrines of the heretics fall to ruin.

It's worth noting that there are places and institutions of higher learning that require applicants to sign statements of faith that require a fundamental belief in substitutionary atonement as THE means of atonement.

This seems to be what Bishop Kimsey is suggesting that Bishop Breidenthal is doing. And it is not.

I do believe that Anglican theology has breadth--but it has boundaries too and they are the creeds.

Derek and Bill,

I've taken a day's fast from this conversation. It was making less and less sense because it was feeling more and more disconnected from the people. Derek, I acknowledge participating in that disconnect in my ungenerous reading of Bishop Breidenthal. I thought he was claiming or implying that substitionary atonement was the only acceptably orthodox theory. You ask me (us) to read him more carefully, and I can get that he's not being so narrow, but I do still feel caught in the maelstrom and feel a pull in his words that points in the direction of one acceptable theory. We're struggling with listening to one another here. It seems to be happening on both sides and evening listening to those we agree with. I hear others in the blogosphere who believe they AGREE with Bishop Breidenthal who are taking his words to exactly the conclusion that substitionary atonement is the only standard of orthodoxy. So stepping back it feels to me like we're having difficulty on both sides of this conversation actually listening to one another. We're hearing words (or missing words) rather than listening to speakers who are our sisters and brothers. So yes, my reading Bishop Briedenthal more closely says I've done that. And, even acknowledging Bishop Briedenthal doesn't hold one atonement theory as the only standard of orthodoxy, I fear he has read Kevin with the same lack of generosity that I've extended to him.

Would we listen differently if we assumed we all had something to contribute to each other and things to learn from one another?

That question seems missing and its absence is what has made some of us make the exaggerated, not wholly apt comparison of this process to the Inquisition. No, it's not the Inquisition, but that frightening image gets evoked because it doesn't feel like we really want to talk to one another and learn from each other. We have fallen into a form discourse that reduces quickly to judgment and defense.

Taking a break and a big step back, I see two core complaints coming from Bishop Breidenthal's critique and those who have gathered around him and believe they are agreeing with Bishop Breidenthal
- an allegation of Kevin Thew Forrester's
'gnosticism' and
- the assertion that he has 'no doctrine of atonement.'

To the allegation of gnosticism the simple answer is 'of course, Kevin is a gnostic. We all are.' David Evans, my first patristics teacher, an Orthodox trained by Florovsky, used to say, "From the Gospel of John onward Christians claim to be the real gnostics." Irenaeus' work is against the 'Gnostics, falsely so-called.' Why? Because Christian faith has claimed that knowledge of the Truth (Jesus) makes us free. We are called to know and love Jesus, and in knowing him to know and love God. I've added the word 'love' because St. Paul contextualizes gnosis in the broader frame of love. Paul teaches that knowledge without love is nothing. But he doesn't reject knowledge. In fact he reframes the contemporary Greek thirst for 'knowledge' in Hebrew and Biblical terms of loving, full-body sexual union.

Irenaeus claim to true gnosis makes sense, beginning to end, when we remember the context of love. Irenaeus claims that the church teaches a gnosis which is public and for all, not secret knowledge (esoteric truths) offered to initiates whom a teacher has judged capable of receiving the teaching ("children of light" unlike the rest of us). "Knowing Jesus," "knowing the Truth," and even "being in Christ" are Christian gnostic formulations. We claim that the knowledge that counts isn't raw enlightenment about 'what's so' but knowledge in loving relationship to the One who is Truth and who reveals the truth of who we are. ARE? Gregory of Nyssa's metaphor for our being in the image of God is that we're coins bearing the perfect image of God but covered with mud. There IS patristic witness to the abiding goodness of human. That doesn't mean there will be no witness to sin, but it does mean human goodness and God's steady, loving work of drawing all into God's own self isn't thrown off course by sin. God's loving mercy is unstoppable.

Irenaeus' appeal to his own place in a line of public teachers is particularly interesting for how it ultimately contextualizes true gnosis in love. His teaching (the gnosis he shares) is reliable because it's public teaching that he received from Polycarp who received it from Papias who received it from John a witness to the resurrection. I hear affection and gratitude for relationship in this line he claims; the true teacher is also a student who loves his teachers.

Knowledge in Irenaeus is relational and, beyond that knowledge in Irenaeus is generous and loving. The public character of the teaching is what marks it as generous. That it's freely offered for the salvation of all is generous.

Irenaeus rejects false gnosticism of the 'knowledge is power' kind. The gnosticism he embraces is a knowledge in and of Love.

Reading through Irenaeus again a couple of years ago, I was startled to realize that he'd done real research. This may be an unprecedented act, a responsible scholarship/reporting like few had seen before. Somehow when I read Against Heresies in seminary, I hadn't grasped the huge generosity of the time Irenaeus obviously spent listening deeply to people he disagreed with. On this score, I'm grateful that Bishop Breidenthal actually talked to Kevin Thew Forrester. In this painful discussion that piece, the conversation seems splendidly Anglican.

I also hear the frustration (and regret the suspicion) that some writers feel at Thew Forrester's sermons being removed from the web. I am only guessing that he (or someone helping him think all this through) said he had plenty of words out in public and as it comes to people dissecting two and three word quotations out of context, providing more material doesn't further a spirit of 'Come let us reason together.' So, I can conjecture why they're gone, but acknowledge that the sermons getting pulled raises for some Irenaeus' line of questions. But in a process where we're watching and wondering what's going on, writings getting pulled does raise questions.
Is Kevin Thew Forrester's teaching public? It seems so, even without the sermons. I don't know what the thinking was that took them down, but do think there's plenty of material for us to see and hear; in fact I hear his severest critics saying they've found plenty of material to consider.

Following David Evans' lead, I'd say the question isn't whether Kevin Thew Forrester is a gnostic. Thank God he is a gnostic. The question is whether the knowledge he teaches is knowledge of the all-loving, all-merciful God. That is what I hear in his teaching.

So, what I hear as the second core question is whether Kevin Thew Forrester teaches an adequate doctrine of the atonement. I hear him as a participant in a conversation I participate in with others seeking to recover and renew (for missionary apologetic and spiritual formation reasons) atonement theory. And recognize immediately a colleague whose understanding of the atonement draws on the work of the Roman Catholic thinker, Rene Girard.

Studying the history of the word 'atonement' in the O.E.D. is another painful instance of habitual Christian language and popular theology generating a narrowed (and damaging) understanding of something central. Like popular use of 'lay' meaning 'amateur and not fully competent,' or popular use of 'sacrifice' meaning 'to destroy one thing for the sake of another,' 'atonement' has a commonplace meaning that the church contributed to which severely narrows its original richness and vigor.

At-onement is God's work of making us (and all creation) one with God's self. Not all the theories of how God accomplished that in Jesus focus or depend on his death. John Henry Newman's lovely hymn, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" deliberately offers a sort of guided tour of some of the ways Christians teachers (particularly our earliest teachers) understood God's atoning work in Christ:

1. Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise;
In all His words most wonderful,
Most sure in all His ways.

2. O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.

3. O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail.

4. And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s Presence and His very Self,
And Essence all divine.

5. O generous love! that He, who smote,
In Man for man the foe,
The double agony in Man
For man should undergo.

6. And in the garden secretly,
And on the Cross on high,
Should teach His brethren, and inspire
To suffer and to die.

7. Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise;
In all His words most wonderful,
Most sure in all His ways.

I note that Anselm's theory doesn't make it into the seven verses. Does that mean John Henry Newman lacks an adequate theory of the atonement?

I recognize Kevin Thew Forrester's writing primarily in the atonement theories Newman distills in verse 4 and to some extent the theory Newman distills in verse 6. The most congenial context for both of those atonement theories is the typical Eastern church understanding that the Incarnation and our union (at-onement) with God were God's intention from before the beginning of creation. Some major Western theologians taught that the coming of sin and death created a crisis which moved God to bestow a previously unimagined (at least from a human perspective, unimagined) blessing...did sin change God's plan? Not exactly - God's foreknowledge even at the creation planned redemption from the catastrophe of sin into a great serially unfolding plan. But the East sees one act beginning to end - divine creation leading us and all toward union with God.

What I read/hear in Kevin Thew Forrester's is a serious student of early Christian thought who is doing his best (and I think his best is good) to speak ancient Christian wisdom in a contemporary voice. Does he do that perfectly? Of course not. But I'm grateful he's doing it and wish we had many more who were doing it with him. He intends to be a missionary, an apologist, and a popularizer. That makes the question of 'how shall we say this?' an urgent one. In a culture where punitive, judging caricatures of Christian faith and community abound, I'm grateful for this voice and hope and pray we'll have him as a bishop among us.

Donald,

I appreciate your concern that we not over-define the mystery of what God has done in Jesus Christ. If I thought that that is what Bishop Briedenthal and others here were doing I would be concnerned as well.

But, it seems to me that the issue is not whether we are defining things too narrowly - seeking one acceptable theory, but rather recognizing that some theories move us outside anything that makes sense of the "doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them."

The problem, as I see it, is that bishop-elect Thew Forrester picks, and chooses and thus misrepresents, early Christian thought. His gnosticism is is not that of Irenaeus, but rather has more in common with the gnostics so-called.

He reduces the human dilemma to one of knowledge only with the presumption of our "at-one-ment" with or without the life, death,and resurrection of Jesus or his teaching.

As the quotations in my earlier post above demonstrate, this was not the knowledge that Irenaeus believed had been imparted to us. Nor did Irenaeus teach that lack of true knowledge about ourselves and God is our only or our main problem. The same is true for the Cappocians and other early theologians.

And, as I've pointed out before, what he says about God and Jesus Christ contradicts most of the Book of Common Prayer. If we can make the words of our common worship mean whatever we want, we move from being comprehensive to being incoherent.

Donald, I think a more liberal case can be made for Forrester without caving in to the unverifiable knowledge claims of an Irenaeus. I don't find your distinction between a knowledge of "what's so" and a "knowledge in loving relationship" sustainable. The minute one says "knowledge," it still seems to carry connotations of a description of a verifiable reality and thus imply that other interpretations are false and one's own is true. Irenaeus said those who did not believe in the virgin birth were disrupting God's plan, as discussed by Uta Ranke-Heinemann. Elaine Pagels point out Irenaeus viewed Jews and heretics as Christ-killers. I don't find metaphors of an original deposit of the faith terribly convincing let alone ethical if they presuppose that only our little group has this unverifiable truth and that all others are like Jews and not to be respected. I do not see Judaism as a defective religion or culture. Quite the contrary!

If love is emphasized then there can be many different ways of loving and there needn't be any common truth or reality underlying the loving relationships. That would seem to be a more ethical approach to religious doctrines.

I end with a quote from Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief: Irenaeus ends his five-volume Refutation calling upon his fellow believers to judge and excommunicate heretics. Recalling how God's wrath falls upon the Jews 'who became the killers of their Lord,' he declares that truly spiritual Christians must also condemn 'all the followers of Valentinus,' since although many believers see them as fellow Christians, they actually subvert the faith and, like the Jews, have become 'sons of the devil.'" (156)

How generous of Irenaeus to preach intolerance!

Gary Paul Gilbert

Gary,

I don't think any theologian worth his or her salt would think that we need to accept everything Irenaeus says. The basic line of his critique of Gnosticism is sound. The whole world is the creation of the one good God, the Father of Jesus, and Jesus really did come in the flesh, die in the flesh, and rise in the flesh, for us and for our salvation.

By his appeal to the public teaching of the Church, Irenaeus precludes an esotericism that involved dangerous distortions of the Gospel.

Gary is simply incorrect to present Irenaeus as alone intolerant. Both Gnostics and Orthodox assumed that truth is one. They just disagreed about what truth was. Irenaeus upheld the simple, liberating truth. I welcome intolerance of Gnosticism, just as surely as I welcome intolerance of racism.

I thank Donald for his charitable effort to continue the conversation. He's given us much to think about, and I think he is getting Breidenthal about right. He is quite correct that there is an Orthodox Gnosis. The Alexandrian fathers in particular lift this up, esp. Clement. The remaining question concerns the atonement. I agree that our theory need not focus on death. I would go a step further and say that to consider the death without resurrection always produces a defective atonement theology. But an adequate theory of atonement must in some sense depend on his death. It must attribute saving significance to the whole story of Jesus, including his suffering and death, even if it focuses its attention on the fact of the Incarnation.

I'm pretty sure Breidenthal could agree with this. The question becomes, can Forrester preach an adequate Easter or Good Friday sermon. Can he affirm the apostolic kerygma? His atonement theology has to permit him to say something about the saving significance of the paschal mystery, even if he is not drawn to this as a focus.

I think that David Tracy's distinction between theologies of manifestation and theologies of proclamation is helpful here. The two must be brought into conversation, or we have a very partial reading of our tradition at best.

Bill, you have made a damaging concession when you admit Irenaeus was an antisemite. Saying his opponents were too doesn't take away from my point that the tradition was infected with antisemitism from the start and thus was not right about everything. What happened to the "original deposit of the faith" which was supposed to guard everyone from so-called error?

Are conservatives allowed to pick and choose from the tradition and yet still call themselves orthodox, while liberals who do the same are said to be departing from the faith?

Gary Paul Gilbert

I forgot to add that what is significant about Irenaeus is that he says that he views his opponents as if they were Jews. Heretic = quasiJew.

We do not live in that world anymore where Judaism was not recognized as the rich religion and cultural religion that it is.

Gary Paul Gilbert

I do not make any such concession. His views about the Jews are fairly common and equally inexcusable, but they are a presupposition used to frame his criticism of the Gnostics. The criticism stands, even if it should have been formulated another way. I also like to appeal to Luther. Does the fact that I like "Freedom of a Christian" mean that I have to accept "The Jews and their Lies"? Chrysostom is just about as bad on this point, but does this mean I have to throw out his paschal homily.

You act like the fact that there are problems in authoritative sources is some radical discovery that should make us stop learning from them. This kind of view would make any form of Christian theology impossible. Like it or not, the Scriptures and subsequent tradition, are infected with all kinds of garbage, including anti-Jewish teaching. Unless you are willing to accept a world with nothing in it except free floating signifiers, there comes a point were you ahve to pick and choose. Irenaeus' brilliance comes out in the simple postulate that the Creator=the Father.

I'm hardly a conservative. Just a Catholic Anglican, trying to be true to the 1979 Prayer Book and the Creeds.

Preaching about the sentence from tonight's liturgy "This is the Passover of the Lord," I reminded the congregation, that the Christian passover does not replace the Jewish one. God's promises to God's ancient people are irrevocable.

Gary,

I may be a conservative. In this conversation, I'm certainly arguing what I believe is a classic, conservative Anglican approach to theology.

Honest conservatives and honest liberals know that picking and choosing is inevitably part of understanding Scripture and Tradition. Some talk about it in ways that are evasive (liberals too). Some talk about it more directly.

If "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," (2 Peter 3:9), then hell and damnation stand against God's will. One kind of Biblical conservative, and I reckon myself such, would see this and a number of other passages (and whole books) as Scripture's effort to find its way to claiming God's utter sovereignty and graciousness in a reconciliation/salvation of all. Another kind of conservative has an answer that means more or less dismissing this passage, contextualizing it in a way that prioritizing other passages about judgment.

In the most conservative reading of tradition, Roman Catholic not Anglican, the classic dilemma creates conflict between infallible tradition and an infallible pope in the VIth Ecumenical Council's condemnation of the doctrine/teaching of Pope Honorius. Intellectual somersaults to sustain infallibility and acknowledge the legitimacy of the council fill volumes.

People who accuse others of picking and choosing (exercising some hermeneutic) in reading the Tradition or Scripture, extend themselves a more generous standard of practice than they exercise toward those others. We all pick and choose. We do it different ways (and to a spectrum of theological conclusions), but disciplined engagement with Scripture and Tradition is part of how we, the church, sustain relationship with one another and hold ourselves in the ongoing conversation and argument of discovering who God is and how God is present with us and for us.

That's more or less the perspective in which I see Irenaeus' discipline of gnosis. Challenged to identify how his reading of the tradition holds together, Irenaeus deliberately shifts from 'knowledge' (Valentinus' system that emphasizes the aptness of the learner and concludes some are incapable of knowlege) toward 'knowing' as a relational process. This inevitably means he's suspicious of teachers looking for apt students to whom they can convey abstract propositional truths. What he trusts is community and relationship available to all that will draw us ever closer to the Living Truth. Knowing, as Irenaeus presents it, is fundamentally relational. Origen's and Gregory of Nyssa's commentaries on the Song of Songs will later connect this personal, relational understanding of knowing back to the Hebrew use and image where "knowing" God, "knowing" the Truth, and "knowing" another in sexual intimacy use the ssame word.

How Irenaeus says we should treat heretics (and Jews) is appalling. It doesn't justify it that he's writing two hundred years before 384, the first time the church had power to do what he suggests and used it. 384 marks the moment when term 'heretic' turns toward terror as Martin of Tours' adversaries took the church judgment 'sagainst the Priscillianists back to civil authorities so those whom the church had judged 'heretic' are beheaded for offense against 'civil' order and society. That Irenaeus's church lacked the power to persecute heretics is of course an understatement. He was made a bishop because of Lyon had suffered the martyrdom of its entire leadership. Irenaeus' advocacy for public teaching and his stand for a church open to all and salvation in principle available to all was made in a context of genuine danger.

Donald

Donald, There were many Christianities from the beginning and attempts to impose unity, as in a silly Anglican covenant, are doomed from the start. The church was divided from the start and will remain divided. Different people need different emphases. Heresy is a value judgment.

I am still processing Irenaeus's role in manufacturing antisemitism. No, when he was in the minority he couldn't do much harm but the virus of intolerance was already there waiting to become active the minute the church become the state religion.

The idea that Christianity has much to do with love, in reality, is a cruel joke that Jews and other nonChristians can testify about. But this is a complex issue I doubt very much will ever be resolved. The degree to which antijudaism/antisemitism infects Christian theology is an ongoing discussion.

In any case, alternative Christianities have become popular while mainline churches have continued to lose members.

Here is a link to an article in the Globe and Mail about hip gnosis.

http://tinyurl.com/c4tqxu

Gary Paul Gilbert

Let's also remember how the issue of Irenaeus came up. Bishop Kimsey defended Fr. Forrester as a follower of Irenaeus.

I am advocating a retrieval of certain aspects of Irenaeus' thought, which seem to be quite central to any tradition, like Anglicanism, which claims to represent the Great Church or Orthodox tradition. Donald is quite correct that Irenaeus is writing at a time when the Church scarcely had power to persecute anyone. The same could be said for any of the problematic statements about Jews in the NT. Any contemporary Christian needs to be suspicious about how the Jews are presented in ancient Christian texts, including the Scriptures, and to both acknowledge the reality of Christian anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism and commit to its eradication.

This doesn't mean that we can't look to past tradition. No religion could avoid this. At our best, we are self-critical and penitent. We bring certain suspicions to any authoritative text without assuming that it is worthless. This is one of many reasons why the cross is so important.

Alternative Christianities may be appealing to some would be consumers of religious goods. They have no place in a Great Church tradition. They compromise our resistance to Empire, with which they happily coexist (on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, see Mark McIntosh's book on mystical theology), and it is a sign of bourgeois privilege to be tempted by them. We ought to accept the public tradition embodied in the rule of faith and the historic succession, for more or less the reasons Irenaeus gives, and in any event, we are already committed to the Nicene Creed as a doctrinal standard.

Gary's point of view, shared perhaps by some within the Episcopal Church, is the mirror image of a view shared by many traditionalist conservatives. He assumes that he is already living in a Church that has the authority structures he wishes it had and is very uncomfortable with the ones it actually does have. It is very much like the outrage on the right when it is suggested that we actually follow the Constitution and Canons. He seems to be very uncomfortable with what is implied by being a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. When have we ever claimed to be up to anything else?

I see the efforts of Bishop Breidenthal as a common sense attempt to live up to the vows that are actually in the ordinal. You can't expect a bishop not to act like one. Better to belong to a tradition that doesn't have bishops, if anti-creedal, private Gnosis is what you are after. Again, this anything goes approach to doctrine, is a sign of a privileged social location, which is happily slipping away for us as a community of faith.

Did I miss something, Bill? Orthodoxy is a product of empire, as in Constantine. The empire made spectacular public worship possible. Alternative Christianities were suppressed. The Anglican Communion is a vestige of the Empire.

The tradition has not arrived yet. It could evolve into many different things or even disappear.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Orthodoxy is not a product of empire. This is a simple misreading of the historical record. One of the things that is appealing about Irenaeus is that he is pre-Constantinian. The trajectory that gave us the Nicene Creed was well underway (in figures like Irenaeus) long before Christianity became the official religion of the empire. Bishops were martyrs long before they became imperial officials.

Within Anglicanism, it has been Catholics who have been the best spokespeople for disentangling Church and state. Anglo Catholicism is by no means a pure, innocent movement, and in some forms it has an almost fascist conception of politics. But the Catholic movement also includes such figures as Desmond Tutu.

Tradition certainly changes going forward, and the past certainly needs to be appropriated in a critical manner. But that doesn't mean there isn't anything firm and settled in it.

When you take away the metanarrative supplied by Scripture, liturgy, and Creed, one will be provided for you by market and media. Gnosticism is a form of hyper-privatized religion for spiritual seekers, much like denominationalism. It easily coexists with neo-liberal global capitalism. Orthodoxy does not, because it implies commitment to a worldwide body with its own story and practices.

I'd be the first and most vigorous critic of the attempts of some to perpetuate colonial models of Anglicanism. And the form of Orthodoxy I'm advocating is a generous, open Orthodoxy with plenty of internal pluralism. But there are boundaries. There are certain options that have already been ruled out, Gnosticism among them. It's a dead end and not part of the game we're playing. Moreover, it undervalues the flesh and the goodness of God's creation. Nothing progressive or liberating about that.

Bill, The Orthodoxy you advocate doesn't exist but seems to be an ideal, whereas the return of repressed gnosticism as well as the collapse of metanarratives is real in the Lacanian psychoanalytic sense of what resists meaning. Grand narratives are not sustainable in a postmodern world, where many different narratives coexist.

"Generous orthodoxy" sounds like an oxymoron, while the Unitarians, who like the word "heresy," are much more open and supporting of LGBTs and others the orthodox would prefer didn't exist. Orthodoxy only pretends to like the body. It tends to worship its sacraments and the visible church, while ignoring everyday needs.

Saying something is a dead end is interesting in that implies history is a narrative about progress. How Hegelian! It is those who, in a sense, missed history, who might have a future.

Marx seemed to understand this when he realized that the proletariat was not quite up to the mark, that it was stupid. One of the great forces of history, he said, is stupidity.

Gary Paul Gilbert