Science, Faith, and Politics

I was watching CSPAN today and came across a discussion on the “Politics of Faith.” Of course I was interested in the topic and decided to watch for a few moments. After hearing about five minutes of comments I had to turn off the program. One of the authors opined that there was a conspiracy going on between corporate America and evangelical Christianity—if you can convince the dimwitted employees of Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart that they are “right with Jesus” and that He will take care of you, you can pay them bad wages and terminate their jobs. This is why, according to this particular author, that these companies have chaplains.

Another author frothed that America was one of the only countries in the world that has a “faith based” approach to abortion and stem-cells. Another railed that Americans love the benefits of technology gained via science, but they don’t want to embrace the very foundation of science itself: Darwinism! This last point would be a surprise to many chemists and physicists that I know! To my mind, and to the minds of many scientists, the foundation of modern science is not Darwinism, but the belief in a rational, coherent, and orderly world that can be at least be partially dissected by the mind of man. Without this presupposition, the practice of science makes no sense.

In the background I could hear the echo of the late Christopher Reeve: “When matters of public policy are debated, no religions should have a seat at the table." People with moral convictions based upon religious principle, you see, are too moronic to seriously think about these issues objectively. It is this parody, this horrible caricature of religious belief, that offends so many Christians—perhaps it is the reason Christians are not even invited to discussions such as these, for fear they couldn’t stop drooling long enough to issue a coherent verbal utterance. This is not the manner of Christianity most classical Anglicans know, if they are familiar with the writings of C.S. Lewis, Thomas Aquinas, William Temple, G.K. Chesterton, or the philosophical writings of modern Roman Catholic thinkers such as John Paul II and Pope Benedict and Reformed thinkers like Alvin Plantinga.

It is from philosophic and theological foundations that science operates, and since these foundations grew within the Christian tradition and gave rise to modern science it is the Christian tradition that must have a seat at the table when the moral issues raised by science and its applications are addressed. From these very foundations we believe in an ordered creation with man as the creature with the intellect to uncover such order; we also believe in the inherent dignity of man. This is really the major problem for the CSPAN authors alluded to above—Christians believe in the dignity of human beings at all stages of development. As long as it is human and living, it has value and worth. Yes, this is a conviction based on religion and philosophy. But how is the conviction that an embryo or a fetus does not have value any different? How is this any less a philosophical or religious position? I have yet to hear that issue addressed.

The Risen Christ.

A short homily for Easter Week.

We join together in this Easter season to celebrate the new life we have in the Risen life of Jesus Christ.

Our faith, the faith that we profess in the Creeds and in the Articles of Religion, the faith revealed, handed down, and taught to us in the holy Scriptures, is a faith grounded in the Trinity, embedded in the Incarnation, rooted in the Cross, and given full life and sustenance in the Resurrection of Christ from the grave.

Without the Resurrection, the Cross and the Incarnation lose their meaning, for our faith is not in a dead Christ, not in a Christ of memory, but in a living Christ, a Messiah who conquered sin and death and lives and reigns and makes intercession on our behalf. It is only because Christ lives that we have a new life and a new relationship with God the Father. It is through Christ alone that we are given redemption.

In that we have been buried with Christ and raised with Him, now belonging to Him and to His Body, the Church, We must seek to be that body, the Body of Christ Jesus here on earth--a living, redeemed humanity. Organs and limbs of His Body, no longer belonging to ourselves but to Christ, submitting ourselves to His will and to His purpose.

We must seek to be the Body of Christ at all times and in all places, not just within the walls of the church building on Sunday morning, because the Body of Christ is not confined to that time nor to that place. We should seek to be the Body of Christ in every moment, always seeking to be guided by His Word, for He is our living Head. Without our being joined to Christ we are nothing more than dying cells, without organization or real function.

It is only in the light and hope of the Resurrection faith that we can live with meaning, with true purpose, reaching out to a world that hungers for the truth and love of the Gospel of Christ.

When we teach the importance of peace, we must be true to the Christian Gospel—we are not simply teaching an absence of conflict, the cessation of hostility—rather we must teach a true peace rooted in the heart of every person, a peace that can only be found in the Blood of the Christ and the self-giving love of God for His redeemed people.

The world must be shown that the embrace of the true diversity of ethnicities and cultures must be grounded in the common truth of the Gospel of Christ and all it teaches.

When cries for justice are heard by Christians, the answer to these cries must be rooted in the power of the Cross and the Resurrection, and the teachings of the Incarnate Son of God.

When forgiveness is given, it must be given in the love of Christ. There is no cheap grace. As God forgave us, so should we forgive others who come to us with penitent hearts.

When we speak of the dignity of humanity and of human rights, these can only be worthy of action and can only make a claim to truth if they flow from the truth that each human life is created in the image of God, and that it was this humanity that God saw fit to redeem by the Blood of Christ, raised again with Him on that Sunday morning in the glory of the empty tomb.

Without the Resurrection, all of these teachings and endeavors are meaningless. Our hope and our faith are a Resurrection hope and faith; our Head is a living Head, and the body of which we are parts is a living Body.

Let us affirm this day our faith in the living Lord, and confess with Job when he proclaims:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

Amen.

Alleluia! The Lord is risen indeed; * O come, let us adore him. Alleluia!

CHRIST our Passover is sacrificed for us: * therefore let us keep the feast, Not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; * but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Cor. 5:7
CHRIST being raised from the dead dieth no more; * death hath no more dominion over him.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once: * but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, * but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 6:9
CHRIST is risen from the dead, * and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, * by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, * even so in Christ shall all be made alive. 1 Cor. 15:20
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

From the Holy Communion of 1549:

Christ our Pascal lamb is offered up for us, once for all, when he bare our sins on his body upon the cross, for he is the very Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world: wherfore let us kepe a joyful and holy feast with the Lord.

The new issue of Earth and Altar is "on the stands!"

This is a fine publication that I have the privilege of being associated with (I had a piece in the premiere issue). The Lenten issue is excellent and I commend it to your reading, edification, and devotion.

http://earthandaltar.org/

Anglican History: Anglicanism defended from Puritan Extremists

While the forging of the Via Media of Anglicanism began with the liturgical work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the apologetics of Archbishop Jewel, and the theological genius of Richard Hooker, it was a sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, that sought to put into practice the Reformed Catholicism of Protestant Anglicanism (Clark 1897, 248-300). It was under her reign that the major doctrinal and liturgical disputes in the Church of England were “officially” laid to rest. In keeping with the ideals of the Anglican Reformation, the canons of 1571 directed that all who preach in the name of the Church shall: “. . .see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon, which they would have religiously held and believed by the people, save that what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old and New Testament, and what the catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine.”

Under Elizabeth the liturgy, the Creeds, the historic ministerial Orders of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon would all be preserved in the Church of England. The liturgy of the Church would be simpler and in English (clearly the language of the people, following the ancient custom of national churches as expressions of the Church Catholic; see Article XXIV). In keeping with ancient practice, married clergy would be allowed, although Elizabeth personally disliked the notion (Hibbert 1991). The matter of the Eucharistic presence was not elaborated in the Articles of Religion any further than stating that the Body of Christ is given, taken, and received in the Supper by faith (Article XXVIII). Lutherans and Calvinists could find similarities and common ground with the bare bones theology of the Articles on most points within an ecclesiastical structure that preserved continuity with the pre-Reformation Church.

The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were affirmed (in keeping with the Anglican Reformers) to be effectual signs of grace (Article XXV), not bare tokens only (rejecting Zwingli’s teaching). While the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper was affirmed, transubstantiation was firmly and explicitly rejected (Article XXVIII). Contentious matters like predestination were pronounced upon using the austere language of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Clergy were to wear vestments, namely the surplice for parish churches, surplice and cope for collegiate churches and cathedrals, and use the Prayer Book exclusively, thus providing a common national Use. The first four great Councils of the Church would provide the doctrinal basis for Anglican teaching (Middleton 2001). Essentially, all the basics for a primitive and reformed Catholicism were laid down. It was a lofty ideal. The Church of England was to be a national Church that all Christian people could honestly belong to. It satisfied many, but caused dissent and anger among others.

Queen Elizabeth is purported to have commented that she knew how much the Romans would need to be pleased in the reformed English Church, but she thought that the Puritans would never be pleased—no matter how much she agreed to their demands (Hibbert 1991; Middleton 2001). If this was her mindset, in retrospect she could be pronounced essentially correct. The Puritan element in the Church of England saw the Prayer Book as being culled from the “dunghill of the Mass” and the reformed vestments as being “popish” garb (Bourne 1947). The Church of England, in the Puritan view, was far from being rightly reformed. Episcopacy was seen as a form of prelacy not far removed from Papacy , willfully ignoring that it was the form of church governance as far back as the first century. The Elizabethan appeal to the ancient Catholic past of the English Church, explicit in the use of a fixed liturgy, the maintenance of the Orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as well as an appeal to patristic theology (the Homilies of the Church of England are punctuated with quotations from the Church Fathers) left many Puritans disquieted and desirous of further change and “reform.”

The English Civil War under the reign of King Charles the First and his Archbishop, William Laud, was a direct result of the goals and ideals of the Elizabethan Settlement and the Puritan resentment it caused. Laud defended the Episcopacy, sought to enforce the use of the Prayer Book, the wearing of vestments, the upkeep of churches, the formal training of ministers, and the use of the King James Bible (Bourne 1947; McGrath 2001). Many historians today see Laud as right in his aim, but heavy handed and errant in the method of his reach (Wedgwood 1958). He was beheaded by a Puritan Parliament for seeking to re-introduce “Popery” into England, and his King was later beheaded as well. Elizabethan Anglicanism, Episcopacy and Prayer Book, was outlawed under the Puritan Commonwealth, only to be brought back at the Restoration under Charles II in 1660. Anglicanism asserted itself again by law, but much less by force as in the days of Elizabeth and Charles. Anglicanism had grown weary of doctrinal disputes, and Puritan sympathies as well as Deist tendencies slowly crept into the Church.

Over the next century Latitudinarianism (an academic approach, at its best broadly orthodox but perhaps a little too philosophical, at its worst Deist and far removed from the relevant issues of Christian orthodoxy) became prevalent in the Church. Distinctly reformed Catholic theology, such as that taught by Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, and Andrewes was slowly forgotten (although learned men like Bishop Berkeley and William Law resisted the darker aspects of Deism and the overemphasis of Reason in establishing “natural religion”). Anglicanism—broadly speaking—became apathetic concerning its past, in practice often forgetting its own rules and theology. The reformed Catholicism of the Elizabethan Settlement that seemed hard won at the Restoration, with its appeal to the ancient Church and her doctors and martyrs, slowly sunk below the horizon, to be replaced by a Church happy to be the “Established” Church of England. The foregoing might very well be a gross oversimplification of the matter—the essential unity of Anglicanism in England between the years of 1688 and 1832 is stressed—in some detail—by Gibson (2001). Moorman (1983) also attests to the vibrancy of the Church during the 18th century. However, the very existence of extremist Low Church elements within the Church of England that seemed to stand for the very things the Puritan movement stood for argues for a certain doctrinal incoherence within Anglicanism during this period. Teachings concerning the Eucharist, which the Prayer Book describes as the chief act of worship, although in some places it was celebrated only four or five time per year, ran the gamut from the heresy of Zwinglianism—in clear contradiction to the Articles—to the near orthodoxy of Calvin’s teaching (Hall 1993; I say this because most readers today would have difficulty distinguishing Calvin’s teaching on the Eucharist from most quotes from the Henrician Bishop Gardiner), notwithstanding Moorman’s (1983) attestation that there could be no doubt as to the straightforward Anglican teaching in the Prayer Book concerning the Lord’s Supper. The 19th century would see a re-emergence of distinctly “Anglican” theology (in a rediscovery of the works of Hooker, Herbert, Andrewes, etc.) in response to the Evangelical and Oxford Movements (each right in their essentials, but wrong in their extremes).

The Anglican Reformation Undone:
Breaking the Via Media of a Church without Protestant Subtractions or Roman Additions. The Errors of Extremes on Either Side

Men like John Wesley responded to the perceived stagnation in the spirituality of the Church of England in the 18th century by relentlessly preaching the Gospel of salvation by the sacrificial death of Christ. Many Anglicans, however, were wary of allowing such enthusiasm to take root in the Established Church. Likewise, many Methodists had little interest in becoming members of the “Established” Church and placed the emphasis on personal salvation to the exclusion of the importance of worship through the use of the Prayer Book (Moorman 1980). Neither John nor Charles Wesley could be accused of such an attitude, however, and intended that the theology of the Church of England be preserved (Moorman 1980, 200), even though John Wesley’s own theological system is, at best, uneven and difficult to comprehend and based too much on his own subjective experiences. Charles Simeon was perhaps one of the best examples of Anglican Evangelicalism: He remained a Churchman, keeping many of his flock from “defecting” to the Methodists. He refused to state a position on the question of Calvinism vs Arminianism (more or less, the debate concerning the predestination to heaven or hell versus man’s ability to respond to God’s freely offered grace). He held both extremes to be true, for both were supported by Scripture. “Be Bible-Christians, not system Christians,” he told those who consulted him about the matter (Moorman 1983, 149).
On the other hand, since the Bible was the central text for the Evangelicals --as it is for all Christians--it was often used as a stand alone text (Solo Scriptura rather than Sola Scriptura), expounded upon by ministers “as they saw fit” (Moorman 1983, 148), rather than in reference to the traditional and orthodox teachings of the Church. The relation of the Christian to the Church the individual belonged to, the Church’s relationship to the past, as well as where Anglican teaching came from seemed to be of little interest to most clergy and laity in the Evangelical movement. In later times the Evangelicals would—and still do—use the best of Anglican Reformed theology, but often the appeal to the Reformation teachings is to denounce “Catholic” elements within Anglicanism (see Zahl 1998). As Moorman (1983, 146) states: “The religion they sought was an individual affair. It had little conception of the Church of the Body of Christ, the spiritual home of all that put their trust in Him.” However, the central emphasis on the Atonement and the work of Christ, the significance of His life for believers was needed in England, and it led to great missionary zeal and many social reforms. The positive significance of Evangelicalism for Anglicanism was (is) in its emphasis upon the centrality of personal salvation and Christ’s work on behalf of the believer by His sacrifice and the free gift of grace by faith. Its negative aspects were often a lack of a coherent teaching of what the Church was (or is), the nature of the ministry, and the nature of the Sacraments.
The Oxford Movement began as a reaction against the lack of a clear teaching that the Church of England was the Catholic Church in England. The Preface in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, composed by Bishop Sanderson at the Restoration, explicitly states this fact by referring to the Church of England as part of the “Catholick Church of Christ” (vi). By allowing dissenters their own chapels and churches, and by allowing Roman Catholics religious rights within England, many felt that the Church of England was forfeiting her right to be "the Church" in England. A clear teaching of Bishops Jewel, Andrewes, Laud, and the other Anglican Reformers had, by and large, been lost from the preaching the established Church. Many High Churchmen in England, Scotland, and America knew the orthodox and historic teaching of the Church of England about the Church Catholic, such as we see in the writings of Samuel Seabury, but in the parish churches it was often unknown. As stated by Vicar Thomas Sikes in 1833 (quoted and Moorman 1983, 152): “There is no account given anywhere. . .of the One Holy Catholic Church. . . Those who have to explain it will hardly know where they are, or which way to turn themselves. . .There will be one great cry of Popery. . .” Indeed, even with the moderate early teachings of Pusey and Keble, most of which only sought to “reintroduce” teachings about doctrine and worship—specifically on the Lord’s Supper and the teachings of the ancient Church—that were explicit in the Prayer Book and the teachings of the Anglican divines, cries of “no Popery!” went up. There was no desire to change the manner of worship in the first phase of the Oxford Movement, only to draw attention to the true nature of the primitive Catholic teachings concerning episcopacy, worship, and the Eucharist. However, later Tractarians ritualists infuriated both Evangelicals and “classic” High Churchmen by introducing practices expressly forbidden since the Anglican Reformation: Using the Latin Missal—in Latin—instead of the Prayer Book, elevating the Host per the rubrics of the Tridentine Missal, multiple genuflections, having processions of the Sacrament encased in a monstrance, introducing obligatory private confession, non-communicating “high masses” (where the Host was to be adored) with "low masses" at which the faithful were to make their communion, and often adopting theologies indistinguishable from Tridentine Roman Catholicism in order to justify the practices. A major and continuing mistake of various Anglo-Catholics is to equate “Romanism” with “Catholicism” and to look to the theology of the Roman Church to define the limits of orthodoxy. The tension between some Evangelical and some Anglo-Catholic elements in Anglicanism remains to this day, largely because neither wishes to acknowledge their own errors and desires to make Anglicanism something it was never intended to be, on the one hand, Presbyterianism with a Prayer Book, on the other, a pale imitation of 19th century Romanism without the Papacy. This standard of allowing "puritan" as well as "Roman" elements into the life-blood of Anglicanism--without correcting the errors of each via the teaching of the ancient Church--arguably led to various other forms of "dissent" (with less orthodox intentions) to gain a foothold in the Church of England and her daughter churches.
The weak elements in both Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism stem either from a poor knowledge of the distinctive elements of the Anglican Reformation or a willful ignorance of these elements. Often, the more stringent Evangelicals ignore the theology set forth in the works of Cranmer, Jewel, and Hooker and focus on the more polemic aspects of the continental Reformers, perhaps hoping that the Puritan “reformation” of Anglicanism will finally take place. They fail to see the continuity of the Articles and the Homilies with the faith of the ancient Catholic Church—or that such a continuity was intended. This has always been a negative aspect of Evangelicalism within Anglicanism.
The weaknesses of extreme Anglo-Catholicism stem from the same, perhaps willful, ignorance. Rather than seeing the Prayer Book, the Articles and Homilies, as well as the Elizabethan canons, as espousing a primitive Catholicism stripped of late-medieval additions, many Anglo-Catholics see only the machinations of black-hearted protestants intent on destroying the “true Catholic teachings” of the Mass, priestly sacrifice in the Roman sense, belief in purgatory, etc (practices the Anglicans reformers and Caroline Divines demonstrated were not “Catholic” in that they were not part of the teaching of the ancient Church). In taking such a stand the Anglo-Catholics often imitate, in both worship and teaching, the Victorian Roman Catholicism prevalent during the later ritualistic phases of the Oxford Movement (Dearmer 1932). In behaving as such they usually claim that they are being “truly Catholic,” while in reality they are only imitating some very modern Roman practices. This is one of the negative outgrowths of the Oxford Movement. During the 19th century, many Anglicans, Evangelical Churchmen and High Churchmen both, as a means of defense against many of the inaccurate teachings of the later Anglo-Catholics, began to rediscover the works of Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, the Caroline Divines, as well as the moderate doctrinal soundness of the 39 Articles (Browne 1887).

The Baptismal Controversy of the late 1800s

A comment from Father William McGarvey of the Clerical Union of the Maintenance and Defence of Catholic Principles (1900), with an added footnote by McGarvey+, given that at least one commenter has accused him of holding to a "protestant doctrine":

The doctrine of baptismal regeneration was the subject of hot dispute between High Churchmen and Evangelicals. The former insisted strenuously upon the doctrine, the latter repudiated it no less strenuously. But by regeneration High Churchmen understood a change of nature, at least they used such expressions as "regeneration of the nature." In opposing this the Evangelicals adduced the condition of the Christian man as conclusive proof that no such change was wrought by Baptism. They could not deny the evidence, which they had in themselves, that the nature of man is yet fallen and unregenerate. In their zeal against what must be regarded as a gross exaggeration of the grace of Baptism, they were led to make statements which seemed to deny that any change at all was wrought in baptism. Had both parties been acquainted with the clear-cut definitions of catholic divinity, and had they taken the pains to understand each other,
the Church might have been spared the miserable schism of 1874. As a matter of fact, Baptism does not change man’s nature. The change is made in the person, which is delivered from the guilt of original sin, brought into living union with God, and given power to struggle with the nature, and to bring it at length under the dominion of grace.

(A footnote to the material above written by Father McGarvey)

This distinction between the regeneration of the person and the regeneration of the nature is thus stated by St. Thomas: “Baptism cleanseth the infection of original sin in so far as the infection of the nature redounds upon the person; and, therefore, by Baptism the penalty which is due to the person is taken away, that is, the deprivation of the divine vision. But Baptism does not remove the infection of the nature in so far as that infection is to be referred to the nature itself; this will come to pass in the heavenly country when our nature will be restored to perfect freedom” (Scriptum in Sent. II. I. 32. 2). This distinction underlies St. Paul’s teaching with regard to the Christian man, and is the key to its interpretation. It is also brought out sharply in the Office of Baptism wherein the minister so positively declares that the baptized “is regenerate,” and yet prays that this same person “may crucify the old man (i. e., the unregenerate nature) and utterly abolish the whole body of sin” (i. e., the original infection which still remains).