A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction

Article XXXI. Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross.

The Offering of Christ once made in that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

From The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse, in the first Book of Common Prayer, 1549:

O God heavenly father, which of thy tender mercie diddest geve thine only sonne Jesu Christ to suffre death upon the crosse for our redempcion, who made there (by his one oblacion once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifyce, oblacion, and satysfaccyon, for the sinnes of the whole worlde, and did institute, and in his holy Gospell commaund us, to celebrate a perpetuall memory of that his precious death, untyll his comming again: Heare us (O merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe. Who in the same nyght that he was betrayed: tooke breade, and when he had blessed, and geven thankes: he brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saiyng: Take, eate, this is my bodye which is geven for you, do this in remembraunce of me.
Likewyse after supper he toke the cuppe, and when he had geven thankes, he gave it to them, saiyng: drynk ye all of this, for this is my bloude of the newe Testament, whyche is shed for you and for many, for remission of synnes: do this as oft as you shall drinke it, in remembraunce of me.

Hebrews 9:24-28:

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
___

It was assumed by the Roman Magisterium, in 1896, that the Church of England had rejected Eucharistic Sacrifice, on the basis of Article XXXI, quoted above in its entirety. But, is the meaning of the phrase "sacrifices of Masses" the same as Eucharistic Sacrifice? Note the plurality of that phrase in the Article. Was it an attempt to reject the Tradition of the Church, or to correct the popular mis-perception of the common man in that time and place?

The average layman needed to be taught two things about the Supper of the Lord. First, the specific sacramental act of the Church in each individual Mass was not, itself, an isolated sacrifice on behalf of the living and of the dead. In the "nun theology" of that time and place, each Mass was viewed just this way: And, so it seemed good for Christ to be offered quite often, over and over again, in as many sacrifices as the priests could reasonably perform.

What needed to be taught, in order to correct this popular error, was best summarized in those words that remind us of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world..." Christ was once offered, and his offering is sufficient. No other sacrifice for sin can be made.

It was this essential truth of the Gospel that motivated the English Reformers to write the Article, and to give us so clear a teaching within the service of Holy Communion. This was the reason for their emphasis on his once for all sacrifice. In no way did this emphasis repudiate Eucharistic Sacrifice. Instead it helped to clarify the true meaning of Eucharistic Sacrifice, in terms that are true to the Tradition of the Holy Catholic Church, in perfect accord with the Scripture. The Anglican emphasis was not a mistake, not an error, and not a rejection of Catholic Faith.

There is one Sacrifice, and every Eucharist is mystically joined to that one event, that offering by Christ of himself as "priest and victim, in the Eucharistic feast." There is one Supper of the Lord, and every Eucharist is the same supper that Christ held in the night in which he was betrayed. When the Church gathers for this highest and most important time of worship, we are taken to the same table with Christ and his apostles, and we are also taken to the cross at Calvary.

"And although we be unworthy (through our manyfolde synnes) to offre unto thee any Sacryfice: Yet we beseche thee to accepte thys our bounden duetie and service..." If we are unworthy to offer a sacrifice, how can we nonetheless offer it? By asking the Lord, of his mercy, the request as it follows: "not waiyng our merites, but pardonyng our offences, through Christe our Lorde..."

Writing in 1624, speaking for the Anglican position, a Church of England priest named William Bedell wrote about Eucharistic Sacrifice:

"[If by it you mean] a memory and representation of the true Sacrifice and holy immolation made on the altar of the cross...we do offer the sacrifice for the quick and the dead, by which all their sins are meritoriously expiated, and desiring that by the same, we and all the Church may obtain remission of sins, and all other benefits of Christ's Passion."

The Eucharistic sacrifice is the complete sacrifice. It takes us to Calvary. It is our bounden duty and service, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and of ourselves as living sacrifices (following Romans 12:1,2); as the English Mass also says: "And here wee offre and present unto thee (O Lorde) oure selfe, oure soules, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee..." Nothing is omitted, nothing neglected, in this highest act of Christian worship.

The second thing they wanted to teach is that the people were supposed to receive the sacrament. For this reason they came up with yet another name for this ancient service, one taken directly from St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians: Holy Communion. It was not enough to "hear the Mass" of a priest. This offering of the whole Church (led by a priest) made the sacrament available so that each Christian could feed on the bread of life. "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."(John 6:54, 55) And, about this we have already written.

Once again, we see that the English Reformers did not attack the Catholic Faith. They defended it, and they restored it.

Original Sin

A reader suggested a thread on the topic of Original Sin.

What I have to say about the subject may be clear already from sermons I have posted. The Fall needs to be seen as the Fall from Grace. The expression "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" comes with the ancient Hebrew concept of knowledge, which is a bit different from our modern concept. "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived..." (Gen. 4:1) Knowledge, to the ancient Hebrews, meant intimacy and experience. "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities," says the prophet about Christ as the Suffering Servant (Isa. 53:11). That does not mean that Christ saved us by learning and acquiring information, but by his own experience of death, his intimacy with it. The choice to disobey God did not produce knowledge of good, but knowledge of a distinction between good and evil; the knowledge was not understanding evil, but intimacy with and experience of evil. Man knew what it meant to disobey God, and became acquainted with evil as a result. This knowledge produced the Fall from grace, because it involved the act of disobedience.

Following patristic reasoning, specifically that of St. Gregory of Nanzianzus, evil has no actual substance, but is simply a shadow that blocks the light of God's goodness. It is an emptiness, a void, a vacuum, like a black hole. Darkness cannot solve the problem of light (John 1:5). The Fall added nothing to human nature, rather it deprived fallen mankind of grace.

So far nothing I have written should be controversial among the major communions of the Church. Nonetheless, the understanding of Original Sin in the East and in the West tends to be different in one major respect. The Orthodox Church does not define Original Sin in terms of inherited guilt, whereas standard Latin teaching includes the idea of being conceived with culpability, inherited guilt. It includes a teaching that each child is born guilty of Adam's transgression, an added element of teaching which goes beyond the universal consensus of the Church. This has led to the Roman Catholic doctrine that baptism washes away the stain of Original Sin, an idea rejected in the Eastern tradition.

Much depends on how to correctly translate Romans 5:12: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." It has been argued by Orthodox Christians that the translation should say: "sin by death," not "death by sin." By this view, the story in Genesis shows that sin produced death, but that the Fall into sin has been passed on to the whole human race through death. (This fits I Corinthians 15:21.) The Greek idiom eph ho was rendered in Latin as "in whom." But, the Greek idiom means "because of," not "in whom." It is from this Latin translation that the idea sprung that everyone has sinned in Adam rather because of Adam.

All Christians share this belief: All the children of man inherit a fallen nature. This underwent change, according to the Orthodox, into the idea that they also inherit culpability, mainly due to St. Augustine's efforts against the heresy of Pelagius (c. 354-418). Pelagius did not believe in Original Sin at all, and taught that each individual had the power to overcome sin without grace. Pelagius was teaching heresy that denies the need for a Savior, and so it was necessary to refute him.

All too often members of the Orthodox Church distort western theology, set up straw men, and shoot them down. But, In this case it does not seem unfair to criticize a standard Western approach to a specific doctrine, or at least to say that we have a genuine distinction (as opposed to artificial distinctions produced by imaginative polemicists). Did St. Augustine go too far? And, does the idea of inherited guilt actually find its basis in scripture? Should we limit our own teaching of Original Sin to the Fall from grace, and avoid the doctrine of inherited guilt?

Make Disciples of All Nations

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28.16-20

Abu Daoud is an Anglican lay missionary to Arab Muslims. He holds an MA in Theology and a BA in Philosophy as well as a certificate in Arabic. He is working towards a PhD through the School of Divinity of a well-known university in the UK. He also has a diploma in Arabic. He lives in a Muslim-majority, Arab city in the Middle East.

The following is an virtual interview with him:

Albion Land: Why Muslims?

Abu Daoud: I was called to the Muslim world while doing a great missions study at my church, it is called Vision for the Nations, and is a lot like Alpha. I learned that there are about 11,000 unreached people groups around the world, and that 4,000 of those are in the Muslim world. I also started to study history more and learned that North Africa and Asia Minor--these were Christian areas prior to Islam. I also learned that for centuries now the church has done almost nothing in terms of actually evangelizing Muslims.

AL: Why is that?

AD: The reasons given are multiple. In my view it is a simple lack of faith. But the reasons are: it's too expensive, we don't see any fruit, you send a guy there for years and he comes back with a handful of converts, the language is very difficult, it is dangerous, they persecute the missionaries and kill the converts, and so on. Kyrie eleison! Where would be if our Lord and his Apostles had been so faithless!

AL: You mention the term "unreached people group". Could you explain what you mean by that?

AD: We really need to change how we read Scripture. When we find Jesus saying "Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations..." we have been reading that word, nation, thinking of nation states, a concept that wasn't even invented until the 19th C. What Jesus is talking about is ethnoi, or peoples. An unreached people group is an ethnos that has fewer than 2,000 followers of Christ or is less than 2% Christian. In other words, it is an ethnos that does not have a community that can start to do its own work of evangelism.

AL: What defines a people group?

AD: The main thing is this: can the Gospel flow freely within it? Within a people group there is a common sense of identity, language, ritual, linguistic commonalities, and so on. God has always dealt with humans in terms of people groups: the Amalakites, Jebusites, Hittites, Samaritans, and so on were all distinct people groups. They were judged communally and they also received the call to repentance communally, as we find with Jonah and the Ninevites. In Revelation [5:9] we find that they will be around forever, for there are people from every "tribe and tongue and nation." In Is. 2 we find that the Lord will judge between many nations and many peoples will go to Zion to learn the Law of the Lord.

In other words, the variety of peoples is a key aspect of Creation and our Lord was aware of this: "This Gospel of the Kingdom must be preached to all peoples, and then the end will come" [Mt 24:14].

The point is this: one third of the world's population belong to unreached people groups.

AL: What are the Continuing churches doing in terms of mission among the unreached?

AD: I have met with Continuing folks a number of times and it always comes down to: we send teams to Mexico to do this or that or we have friends in Africa and we give them money for x, y or z. I'm not saying any of this is bad, there is much to be said for short-term teams and there are unreached groups in Africa, but they are mostly in N. Africa which gets no attention.

AL: You have heard people say that if you have a thriving foreign missions program, then you will also have successful domestic outreach. What do you think?

AD: I would agree! If you don't share the Gospel cross-culturally then you how can you expect your people to share it within their culture? Ephesians 4:11 gives us a list of the vocations in the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. The apostle is one who is sent out from his people group to another people group to share the Gospel with the view of making converts, catechizing and baptizing them, and ultimately planting a new congregation.

The evangelist shares the Gospel within his own culture. They are different charisms and callings: it is quite different to communicate the Gospel across cultural lines. All of us have chances to evangelize. Here I am talking about vocations and long-term callings within the church.

AL: But most continuing churches have a hard enough time just keeping their heads above water as it is.

AD: If your church is focused on receiving and retaining God's favor then it will be like the Dead Sea, which only receives water and has no life. If your church receives from God but then goes out to the people of the world to share what has been received, it is like the Sea of Galilee, which though small is full of life.

AL: Many readers would reply that the office of the apostle is the same as the office of the bishop. Whereas it seems you are saying the office of the apostle is in fact that of the cross-cultural missionary who is engaged in evangelism and church-planting.

AD: I am not speaking here about the Twelve, or about apostolic succession. The word apostle is used in two senses in the NT, that is one of them. The fact that there are two related but distinct meanings of the word apostle explains how Junia can be an apostle--she is a lay missioner, as is my wife. The apostolic missioner may be a lay person or ordained to any of the Orders. This is also the case with the vocations of evangelist, teacher, and so on.

AL: Let me push you a little: it seems you are saying that most of the "missionaries" around the world are not technically missionaries by your definition--they are running expat churches, teaching at schools, working in administration, and so on. Is this really what you mean to say?

AD: I am saying that those people are doing good work, but they are not missionaries unless they are focused on evangelism and church planting. That is apostolic mission. These people are certainly ministers of the church (whether laity or clergy), they have vocations as teachers, pastors, and prophets perhaps, but the heart of apostolic ministry is communicating the Gospel across ethnic boundaries, specifically, as Paul says, where the Gospel has not been preached before. That is, among the unreached, what is also called frontier mission.

AL: How can churches and individuals learn more about frontier missions and how to make a difference when it comes to third of the world population that is, as you say, unreached?

AD: I know of one Anglican missions agency that is focused on frontier work, Anglican Frontier Missions [www.afm-us.org], I would say to give them a call and see what the possibilities are. The easiest way is to start funding the work already going on among unreached people groups. This will be hard for Continuing Anglicans as they would need to work with evangelical Anglicans until they get their own people on the ground. Ultimately the goal will be to have teams of continuing Anglicans on the ground among the unreached groups of N. Africa, the Gulf, and South Asia. We are talking about countries like Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Saudi, Pakistan, India, Chad, and Iran. It is not easy to get into these countries, but it is certainly possible and you will be amazed to see how God opens doors when you make yourself available. A practical book from the point of view of strategy is Planting Churches in Muslims Cities by Greg Livingstone. I also recommend using the Vision for the Nations course for Sunday School. It is evangelical, but with some creativity and supplementation it can be very effective for an Anglo-catholic parish.

Concerning the Theory of Doctrinal Development

Scott Carson has written an interesting response to recent discussions on his own blog. It is well presented and thought out. It is friendly and conciliatory, as well as both polite and robust- traits we appreciate at The Continuum. But, it shows me how very differently from us some modern Roman Catholics have come to think. And, also how much they depart from the mind of the ancient Church and the Fathers, at least as far as my several decades of reading have led me to understand.

I quote some here.

One thing that I've noticed about the debate so far is a certain amount of equivocation on certain key terms, such as "authority", "private judgment", "the Church", etc. I don't think that either side disagrees that it is not up to the individual person to pass judgment on the truth of authoritative Church teaching; where they disagree is over what constitutes an authoritative Church teaching and why. For example, Anglicans as well as Catholics will assert that a Christian must believe in the Trinity, and both will agree that the reason why a Christian must believe in such a thing, in spite of the fact that no such thing is ever mentioned in the Scriptures, is because the doctrine has been taught by the Church. Well, what does that mean? If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said that it means that it was taught by an Ecumenical Council. Some Catholics perhaps still think that is what it means; but to some Anglicans what it means is that the doctrine of the Trinity meets a certain standard, namely, the Vincentian Canon (a subject of much comment both here and at Mike Liccione's Sacramentum Vitae). That which has been believed by all Christians at all times and places, these Anglican say, is what must still be believed by anyone professing to be a Christian.

As it happens, not everyone agrees that the doctrine of the Trinity actually meets this criterion. It is an empirical question, and as far as I can see most, if not all, of the evidence points towards the doctrine being one that evolved over time. This does not preclude the possibility, of course, that it was at least secretly believed right from Day One, but unfortunately there is no evidence to that effect, and the very fact that it was necessary for an Ecumenical Council to define the doctrine, and to anathematize anyone who rejected it, suggests that there were plenty of folks who did not accept it.

The problem is Cardinal Newman's theory of Doctrinal Development. His idea was rejected by the Roman Magisterium, but has come to be respected more and more over the last century. If you want to understand that theory, you have no better brief example than what Scott Carson wrote in the above quotation.

The problem is, it is factually wrong.

About us: We do not believe the doctrine of the Trinity simply because it meets the criterion of the Vincentian Canon. Christianity is the Revealed Religion. In fact, nothing meets the criterion of the Vincentian Canon that cannot also be demonstrated from scripture. The first authority is scripture, and only scripture contains revelation. The teaching voice of the Apostles once contained it, but within one generation the New Testament was left behind containing their teaching, along with all things necessary for salvation. Writers, including some as early as, for example, St. Justin Martyr, reveal that the Church received the same twenty seven books, if only vox populi, as authoritative. In some regions questions were raised about II Peter and Jude, and in others The Shepherd of Hermes was received equally. But, in general they had what we have, the same twenty seven books as the last portion of our one Canon in two Testaments. At the Council of Nicea, the bishops merely clarified what had long been established about the New Testament Canon. The Bible is part of the Church's Tradition, for it is both the Word of God and the Book of the Church. The See of Rome was clear on this too back when Newman proposed his theory, and so they rejected that theory.

About the doctrine of the Trinity: It is most certainly in the Bible, taught very clearly and powerfully. I can prove the doctrine with nothing but a Bible in my hand. I am very happy for the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, but I can prove the doctrine the same way those holy Fathers at the Councils actually proved it: with scripture. I fail to understand how anyone could not. It is, frankly, easy. It is easy because it was not hidden. Try to make sense out of John chapter one, for example, without the Trinity as the only solution, in light of the obvious fact that the scriptures teach Monotheism.

About the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea, it was not called because "there were plenty of folks who did not accept" the doctrine we have come to call the doctrine of the Trinity. It was called because Arius was instantly recognized for the heretic that he was, introducing new and strange doctrine contrary to the teaching that the Church had believed all along, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. (Yes, the Arians later inflicted themselves on the Church, but only by the power of an emperor. This drove St. Athanasius into exile several times, making him the first bishop, and logical patron saint, of the Continuing Church.) That is what history shows, that is what the Fathers wrote, and that is why the doctrine of the Trinity meets the test we apply: Scripture, Right Reason and Tradition.

And, again for Fr. Alvin Kimmel's benefit: Scripture, Right Reason and Tradition, that Tradition constituting quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, is not, and never has been, "private judgment."

The Immaculate Conception of our Lady

I have been having an interesting e-mail discussion with Fr. Glenn Spencer (APA), and we agreed that it would be worthwhile to post it here, and open the subject to wider discussion.

Dear Fr. Hart:

I've been reading Mascall all year and plan to read all I can in August while on vacation. I have recently received from a book seller in England The Blessed Virgin Mary and there is an essay or two that I'd love to discuss with you. In particular the essay on the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. I certainly do affirm her sinlessness and I believe that the BCP does as well when it refers to her as a "pure virgin" in a number of places. It seems to me that a "pure virgin" simply means, by the logic of the language, "a virgin who also happens to be pure." St. Basil, I believe, has a sermon On Virginity where he states, "I am a virgin, but I am not pure." There are plenty of "impure virgins" around, but only one "pure virgin." Also our hymnal calls her a "spotless maiden," which basically means the same thing as "pure virgin." But that's not the same thing as the Immaculate Conception of our Lady, as you know. It seems to me that that dogma militates against the old patristic formula, "only that which is assumed is saved." Now it is my understanding that the older view is that at the moment of the hypostatic union the Logos received from our Lady our human nature in a fallen state and that by virtue of the hypostatic union, the single person of Jesus Christ (who is truly and fully human and truly God) came to be and the humanity received from our Lady was healed of all the wounds of the fall so that that person of Jesus Christ was without sin in any manner. In fact the whole sacramental process by which we are grafted into Christ and participate in the Divinity, in a real and not an idealistic manner, and by which we are saved and divinized, repeats the action of the Prototypical event of the Incarnation, in the Sacraments, albeit we are not perfected, but we do truly participate in the Divinity. I'd like to understand how on earth the Immaculate Conception doesn't overthrow this fundamental sacramental process? Understand though that I am not denying that our Lady was and remains a "spotless Virgin." Thanks for your help.

Fr. Glenn

Dear Father

The whole question needs to be discussed in terms of that phrase that was spoken by the Angel Gabriel: "Hail thou that art highly favored." What does "highly favored" mean as opposed to "favored" in the normal sense? As you probably know already, "highly favored" is the translation of the KJV for one word in the Greek, charitoō (χαριτόω) a form of charis (χάρις); and it is rendered "full of grace" in the "Hail Mary." As long as the Immaculate Conception is considered to be grace above and beyond the grace normally given (to speak in terribly inadequate terms), it may be reconciled to the rest of Christian doctrine. You mentioned sacraments, but remember that sacraments convey grace, and so for Mary to be full of grace (highly favored, highly graced) required no sacramental process, any more than the gifts of Confirmation (and, it seems, Consecration) required no sacramental process, because what happened on Pentecost, and later what happened at the house of Cornelius, made any sacramental process unnecessary. God acted to impart grace directly, even though that impartation normally requires sacramental acts of the Church.

In fact, on the blog I wrote a piece a few months back called "The grace of the sacraments."

Nonetheless, just because it may be reconciled to the rest of Christian doctrine, because it is all about grace (not that fairly useless concept called "merit"), does not mean it can be called a dogma. It has never been revealed, never been a subject addressed by Ecumenical Council, is considered incorrect by the Orthodox Church, was rejected by St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.

RH+

I agree with this and especially about her direct reception of grace. The problem for me is the idea that she would have been conceived without original sin. The problem is that our Lord would have in that case received unfallen human nature from our Lady. But then what is really accomplished by the hypostatic union? I think the older Eastern Orthodox understanding is that at the moment of the hypostatic union the humanity our Lord received from our Lady was completely healed of all the wounds of the fall and so the person of Jesus Christ was without sin. Also at the same moment of the hypostatic union our Lady was also healed of the wounds of the fall. I may be wrong but that's the sense I get from some of the Fathers. Gregory of Nazianzus: That which is not assumed cannot be saved. My point about the sacramental principle is that the hypostatic union is the prototype and the model of the how the sacraments work - that is the joining of ourselves to Christ.

gms+

Why was it necessary for the Lord to receive fallen human nature? St. Paul says only, "in the likeness of sinful flesh." What was the glory that was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration? Divine Nature is invisible. The fall is inherited as a lack, not as a quality. Fallen nature lacks grace, and therefore is unholy.

Even after being beaten severely and crucified, the Lord could not die until he "gave up" his spirit.

I do not think it necessary for the Lord to have received the lack of grace that is, in essence, the fall. He received a full human nature into his Divine Person, whereas without grace, we have were born with less than full human nature, and certainly with nothing more.

RH+

But you are exactly right about the fall being a negation and not a quality. That's what he received from our Lady (our human nature not already saved human nature) and of course joining our nature to the Logos our salvation is made possible. The Orthodox reject the IM because they say that the West (I agree with the Orthodox) misunderstands original sin and they turn it into a positive quality - a "thing" instead of a negation. It seems to me that the IC pushes our redemption back to the conception of our Lady because that's when our healing first occurred. I think this is a problem caused by Vat. I and it is a shame because it is completely unnecessary.

gms+

Please Pray

Alice Linsley asked me to post this.
There have been several teen suicides on the Lakota reservation, arising from the relentlessly bad conditions that prevail there. A priest of the American Anglican Council (not in the Continuum, but in a case like this, so what?), joined by RCs and others, has called for intensive prayer. Read about it at

http://northernplainsanglicans.blogspot.com/2008/07/40-days-of-prayer-and-fasting-war-on.html

ed

Trinity VII

Rom. 6:19-23

Mark 8:1-9

And his disciples answered him, From whence can we satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?

Having lived in a desert, with tall cactus plants and mountains made entirely of rock, I find the dilemma of the disciples quite understandable. How do you come up with a meal in such a place? The Lord was demanding the impossible; but then He can demand the impossible without being Himself impossible; for He also provides, and when necessary by means miraculous. In providing food for the multitudes in the desert, He also made known that it is He Who feeds us, both providing all our needs in this life- a fact we can so easily forget- and providing that greater thing, the miraculous food of eternal life.

Beyond the demonstration of power in this miracle, we are given a glimpse of the Dominical Sacraments. By Dominical, I mean those two sacraments instituted by Christ in the New Testament. Remember that of the seven sacraments, five can be found in the pages of the Old Testament. The first sacrament mentioned in the Bible is marriage, as God performs the first wedding in Genesis (and all valid marriages are the work of God himself, not subject to man’s legal fiction called divorce). Then we find Moses and Aaron ordaining the Levitical priests, and Moses ordaining Joshua as a special kind of prophet (as later Elijah would ordain Elisha in his place as prophet). And, in this picture of ordination, both of priests and prophets, we see that double ministry of Word and Sacrament. In the ministry of atonement, when the priest would hear confession and make Kippur for the penitent, we see absolution. In the anointing of the shepherd boy David, by Samuel, we see Old Testament Confirmation as the Sprit of the Lord came and remained on David for the rest of his life, giving him the gifts whereby not only could he be a just king, but a prophet as well, prophesying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the benevolent miracles of such prophets as Elijah and Elisha, we see the place of healing in our sacrament of anointing the sick.

So, when our Catechism says that Christ ordained two sacraments only in His Church, as generally necessary to salvation, we need to realize what this means. First it means that these were introduced as sacraments in the New Testament, because the other five sacraments already were in the Old Testament, though renewed and given deeper meaning in Christ. John the Baptist transformed the Mikvah, the bath of cleansing, into an act of repentance. But, after He rose from the dead, Christ established a new baptism, a new mikvah, whereby we enter into His death and then into His resurrection, being born again into his resurrection. And, this is the context in which Saint Paul wrote the words in this Sunday’s Epistle, the same chapter that we read from one week ago.

Saint Paul was not calling us to live a new and holy life simply because it is a good idea. It is not the hollow philosophy of the comical character Maxwell Smart. Those of you old enough to remember Get Smart, a TV comedy in the 1960s, recall that philosophy, simply put by Maxwell Smart, "good is better than bad because it’s nicer" (or was that Mammy Yokum?) Well, unlike Mr. Smart, Saint Paul calls on us to live a holy life in a deeply significant context. The portion we read last Sunday opens with these words:

Romans 6:

1: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

2: God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

3: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

4: Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

5: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

6: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

7: For he that is dead is freed from sin.

8: Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

9: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

10: For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

11: Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And, the portion for this week follows in the same chapter. The subject, the context for today’s call to holiness, is baptism. So, we need to understand that we must live a holy life because of who we are. We were baptized into Christ’s death, buried with Him in baptism and raised to walk in the new life. This is what our Lord meant when He said to Nicodemus, "you must be born again" (as Romans 6 interprets John 3 for us). To die, be buried and risen with Christ is what happens when we are born of water and of the Spirit.

We should be thinking, at this point, about that rather strange question at the beginning of our Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer (almost identical with the first Office of Instruction). The question at the beginning of our Catechism in the Prayer Book does not sound at all religious, and has no hint in it of theology, no sense of inspiration. It is rather mundane, almost enough to make one wonder if what follows can be at all interesting. The question is "What is your Name?" That’s, the old identity question many people ask- "who am I?” The first question and answer run as follows:

"QUESTION. What is your Name?

Answer. (in my case) My name is Robert. I was given this name by my sponsors in Baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, born again in water and the Spirit as a child of God, and made an inheritor of His Kingdom.

Question. Who gave you this Name?

Answer. My Sponsors in Baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven."

Suddenly, the question of your name, or the question "Who are you?" becomes very theological, very religious, and quite inspirational. In the eyes of the Church I was dead until I was baptized, dead in sin. "In sin my mother conceived me" as a son of the fallen race called Adam. In baptism I was born again of water and the Spirit, because I was baptized into Christ’s death, buried with Him in baptism, and made alive again in the new life of His resurrection. Until then I had no name, because until then I was not alive. Who are you? In baptism you became a member of Christ. In Baptism you became the child of God. In baptism you became an inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven. Who are you then? Simply put, who you are is, you are In Christ. That is your identity.

With that identity, everything is made new. Every old commandment that says "thou shalt not" is simply a part of that larger commandment that says "thou shalt." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God...Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" If you are busy with these commandments that begin with the words "thou shalt," you will have less trouble observing the commandments that begin "thou shalt not." The “shalt not” sort of sins would rob you of a joy too precious to be cast aside. Why? Because of who you are. Being, as you are, In Christ by baptism, you are in Him and in the Father; This is what baptism has done for you, and this is why you will find joy only by living a holy life in which there is simply no time and no place for willful sin.

The other Dominical sacrament has everything to do with the Gospel for today. All of what the world offers comes short. We are all in a desert place without any natural means to feed ourselves. We cannot keep our selves alive, no matter what vitamins and exercise we get. We will die, and waste away, because that is the wages of sin into which the human race has fallen. We were driven out of the paradise that gives the fruit of natural immortality. Even the happiest life is marred by this simple fact: It will end. "And that is the rub" says Hamlet: "what dreams may come." Saint Paul tells us: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In the emptiness and desert of natural mortality, where no hope can be found, no power to destroy death and stay alive, Christ has come as the Bread of Life. He feeds us, not only to the nourishment of our bodies, but with what he calls "the food and drink of eternal life." Just as He, by a miracle, fed thousands with a very little bit of food, and did so in a desert where no food could be found, He feeds us with His own body and blood, giving us Himself in the sacrament of Holy Communion so that we may feed on His resurrected Body, and drink his Blood that was shed for our atonement, and live forever.

These two sacraments are generally necessary for salvation. Yes, God can save individual souls without them, such as when our Lord promised to open Paradise to the dying thief crucified next to Him. Of three men crucified that day, one was losing his life, One was giving His life, and the third was receiving his life. He was receiving life in the place of death, just as multitudes had been fed in a place of dearth.

However, even though God can save without these sacraments, they are, nonetheless, generally necessary to salvation. And, we all have the opportunity to receive life in Baptism and in the Lord’s Supper, doing so because our faith instructs us to. The Church must still minister as God has ordained, not according to the empty desert of human rationalization. Let us be faithful to the One who can feed us by His power, giving new and eternal Life that the world cannot understand.

You are given the new birth from death into life by baptism, having become a new creation in Christ Jesus, and you must feed on the Lord Jesus Christ who meets your greatest need in the wilderness of sin and death that this world is, and by feeding on Him live forever. In every way you have been given every gift you need to rise above sin and death, to be saved from sin and death, to enter into life, and to have life enter into you. You are in Christ, and you receive Him as the food and drink of eternal life. This is grace. This is power.

When you come forward this day toward the altar to receive the Blessed Sacrament, feed on Him by taking Him into your very mouth, and so also feed on Him in your hearts by grace and with thanksgiving.

Straw men

The following quotations have been attributed to bishops in the Canterbury Communion, and who were present at GAFCON.

"Scripture never suggests an ordained woman is in danger of losing her salvation"

“It is not a sin to be a woman.”

“They can do the job.”

The first two are remarkable for answering arguments that nobody ever made. That is what we call setting up straw men. The third is remarkable for demonstrating ignorance about the very nature of Holy Orders, beginning with the idea that sacred ministry is merely a job. I will deal with this last one first.

In fact, the very kind of men whom St. Paul dismisses as potential candidates for ordained ministry, when writing to Timothy and to Titus, can also "do the job." Can a woman "do the job?" Frankly, that depends on what one means by "the job." She can lead prayers, and she can go through the motions of sacramental ministry. She may even preach a fine sermon (with all due respect to Dr. Johnson). What she cannot do is perform the priestly ministry of Christ within his Church, as we have already seen. And, even for those who understand ordained ministry differently from us, it remains a fact relevant to both their understanding and ours, that no woman has even the potential to be the husband of one wife, or head of a household. And, the need for this is clearly set forth by an honest reading of I Timothy chapter three.

Furthermore, if a woman has to perform a man's role in order to have any real ministry (and I Corinthians 12 teaches clearly that the whole Body of Christ has gifts for ministry), the Church will be deprived of the gifts God has given to her for our benefit. It is no coincidence that the same apostate Anglican bodies that embraced the so-called "Gospel of Thomas" (the author of which is as likely to have been Danny Thomas as the Apostle Thomas) have eliminated the true ministry of women, including the elimination of the role of deaconess. By trying to force women into the priestly ministry reserved for men, that is the three orders, they have lived down to the teaching of that gnostic book, that ends with this verse:

"Simon Peter said to them, 'Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.' Jesus said, 'Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.'"

That seems to be what the Episcopalians and other non-Traditional Anglicans have decided to live by.

Now, about the first two quotations above, it is disingenuous at best to answer the argument never made. Furthermore, it is easier than having to grapple with sacramental theology. A far more intelligent statement was made by the chairman of Forward in Faith, North America (FiF/NA), Bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy, writing in response to the Jerusalem Declaration:

"Under the providence of God, our advocacy has borne fruit. It must continue so long as the disputed issues are under consideration. But at the same time, we must begin to develop pastoral and ecclesial structures, so as to take the place as a fully orthodox ecclesial body now opened to us by the formation of the new province for which we have so long prayed and worked."

For some reason this remark has come under fire from some of my friends. That is a shame, because I know for a fact that at the top of the "disputed issues" list is the "ordination" of women. This was written in his formal capacity for FiF/NA. When the bishop writes, "our advocacy has borne fruit," he means, specifically, FiF's advocacy for the all male priesthood. That is what FiF (criticisms of which are acknowledged) sees as the mission of the organization. I know also that FiF defines "orthodox" differently from the Reasserters, and that FiF's definition rules out the "ordination" of women. In fact, Bishop Ackerman is saying that ecclesial structures must be prepared for a new Province, but that the new Province will have to be free of this innovation. It is much closer to what we among the Continuum believe, than it is to anything many of the GAFCON people practice.

Among those Anglicans trying to form this Province they hope for, the disputed issues will not receive any genuine consideration as long as some of the bishops set up and shoot down straw men. Straw men answers to silence, such as, "Scripture never suggests an ordained woman is in danger of losing her salvation," and “It is not a sin to be a woman” indicate why certain bishops are obstructing hopes for any progress. They seem unwilling to take the debate seriously, which is why they hinder the formation of workable ecclesial structures.

Archbishop Haverland on GAFCON

If there is one place that comments from the Archbishop of the ACC should be posted about an important event like GAFCON, it is on The Continuum.

METROPOLITAN’S MESSAGE: GAFCON 2008

A number of self-described traditional Anglicans from around the globe, including many bishops and archbishops from the ‘global South’ bodies of the official Anglican Communion, recently met in Jerusalem at a meeting called GAFCON. This meeting was called largely in response to the refusal of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and of the Anglican Church of Canada to heed earlier calls to rein in innovations concerning matters of sexual morality, including notably the ordination and consecration of self-proclaimed and practicing homosexuals and the blessing of ‘same sex unions’.

GAFCON produced a now widely published statement which does not address the innovations that led to the formation of our own Continuing Church in 1976-8: namely the ‘ordination of women’, a new and radical Prayer Book, and a pro-abortion policy. Concerning GAFCON and its statement, I have several observations, which I believe are widely shared in the Anglican Catholic Church and, indeed, by most Continuing Churchmen. For that reason I make bold to write in the first person plural in what follows.

1. On the immediate issues that led to the GAFCON conference, we stand with GAFCON and its statement. That is, the ACC believes and teaches what Scripture and the universal Church have always taught everywhere concerning human sexuality. We would only note that GAFCON fails to address the problem of divorce and remarriage, which antedates the present crisis concerning homosexuality, and which in many ways prepared the ground for the more recent aberration.

2. The GAFCON statement, by its silence concerning the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate, implies that this earlier aberration is tolerable, if not desirable, and is at worst a much less serious departure from the universal practice of the orthodox and catholic Church than is homosexuality. This silence and its implications are profoundly mistaken. The ordination of women and homosexuality both flow from a confusion concerning both sexual roles and also the place of sexual identity in Church and Christian life. Furthermore, pretending to ordain women to Holy Orders requires a rejection of clear Biblical teaching and of the unbroken practice of the Catholic and Orthodox Church. The ordination of women is in effect a claim by official Anglican bodies to authority over the deposit of the Faith. The ordination of women assumes a falsehood: that Anglicans have authority to alter the doctrine and practice of the central Tradition of Christendom, which is represented by the consensus of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and all older Anglican Churches. Such a claim, once made, can be pressed into service to justify any further innovation or aberration in doctrine or morals. No one should be surprised that Churches which began to ordain women in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, began to legitimize homosexual conduct in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century.

3. GAFCON asserts and appeals for support to formularies which have a notable Anglican pedigree: namely the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the three Creeds, and the first four Ecumenical Councils. No one can or should deny the authority of these formularies. However, these same formularies received formal assent from the same Anglican bodies that since the 1970s have abandoned orthodox and catholic doctrine as noted above. Many Anglican bodies traditionally cultivated a kind of studied doctrinal ambiguity which combined material toleration of grave theological errors with formal acceptance of traditional creeds and formulas. Therefore, the Continuing Churches wisely have fixed our doctrinal stance firmly in the Affirmation of Saint Louis. The Affirmation, confirmed by the Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Catholic Church, explicitly positions the ACC within the great central Tradition of Christendom, represented by the consensus of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and of the teaching of the Undivided Church of the first millennium. Since the studied ambiguities of some traditional Anglicans permitted the grave errors of recent years to arise, it is no longer enough to recapitulate compromise positions and formulas. A clearer, more explicitly catholic and orthodox stance is demanded by the times. GAFCON’s statement, therefore, is far inferior to the Affirmation and in the long run will not stand up to the winds of error blowing in our world. I would note also that the Affirmation is not a confession or a new statement of belief, but rather affirms the authority of the great central Tradition of Christendom.

4. By way of fixing our own Church’s teaching clearly, I note the following teachings of the Affirmation of Saint Louis and of the Anglican Catholic Church on matters about which GAFCON is silent:

– there are Seven Ecumenical Councils, not merely Four;
– while the 1662 Prayer Book has many strengths, it also has some notable weaknesses, including a truncated Eucharistic Canon, which the 1928 American, 1954 South African, and other later Prayer Books have corrected. We by no means assert the invalidity of any form in the 1662 book, but neither can we accept that 1662 is the central or best model for Anglican liturgy;
– the 1979 Episcopalian Prayer Book, and many other contemporary language books at use in the official Anglican Communion, are radically flawed and are often subject to grave theological objection;
– all three Holy Orders are male in character;
– the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are generally necessary for salvation and as divine acts convey God’s offer of grace objectively and unfailingly;
– there are seven sacraments received by the central Tradition of the universal Church, namely Baptism; Confirmation or Chrismation, the Eucharist, Penance, Unction of the Sick, Matrimony, and Holy Orders.
– all Anglican formularies, practices, and beliefs properly are subject to evaluation and interpretation in the light of the central Tradition. If both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches reject something that some Anglicans believe, then that something probably is false, particularly if it concerns a matter of importance. Our security lies in the authority of Scripture as interpreted by the universal Tradition and by the living consensus of the great Churches, not in peculiarly Anglican notions;
– human life is sacred from the moment of conception to natural death, and directly willed abortion always is gravely sinful.
– valid Christian marriage establishes an indissoluble sacramental bond which cannot be broken save by death;

5. We call upon all self-described Anglicans to reject clearly and decisively all of the liturgical, moral, and theological errors of recent years, beginning with the ordination of women. We call upon all self-described Anglicans to return to the central Tradition of Christendom and to recognize that evangelical and neo-Pentecostalist Protestantism is no safe haven. We welcome GAFCON as a small step in the right direction. But we confidently predict that the ambiguities and silences that characterize its statement will lead rapidly to fragmentation and confusion without any countervailing theological achievement. The only issue addressed in a somewhat adequate fashion by GAFCON is homosexuality. Far more is at stake.


– The Most Reverend Mark Haverland, Ph.D.
Archbishop and Acting Primate
Anglican Catholic Church

GAFCON

Is the accent on the Gaffe or on the Con?

by Fr. John Hollister:

The “Jerusalem Declaration” issued as part of the “Final Statement” from last week’s GAFCON conference sounds just wonderful. Warm, fuzzy words abound and the whole thing sounds just like what real Anglicans might have said back in the 1950s, had there been any need to say them.

The problem is just that: Words. A word means something only if both the writer and the reader understand it the same way; otherwise, it is not a means of communication but an obstruction to communication. That is why elementary Philosophy classes used to be taught: “First define your terms”.

“Doonsbury”, the newspaper cartoon, currently has a theme about Berzerkistan, a “former Soviet republic” where the psychopathic dictator renames everything in sight with the most beautiful word he knows – his own name. In such a fantasy realm, no one can ever be sure what someone else refers to because the key word has so many potential meanings. For other examples, just read the “news” releases from the current government of Mugabeland (oops, I meant “Zimbabwe”).

The “Jerusalem Declaration” lives through the looking glass in that kind of country of slippery meanings. Its Paragraph 1 says: “We, together with many other faithful Anglicans throughout the world, believe the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, which defines our core identity as Anglicans....” But it makes no attempt to define what “faithful” means. Does it mean “faithful to what Anglicans until the 1940s or ‘50s understood their faith to be”? Does it mean “faithful to the ‘Anglicanism Lite’ that rejects the authority of Holy Tradition and Scripture but thinks male-male and female-female sex is ‘yucky’”?

So as far as the GAFCON Declaration gives any guidance, anyone can call himself a “faithful Anglican”, provided he either bought a ticket to Jerusalem or knows someone who did. Even worse than what GAFCON did not say is what it said incompletely. Just look at the problems raised by some specific provisions of the “Jerusalem Declaration”:

“2. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading.”

But St. Paul’s Epistles, which up until now have been accepted as inspired Holy Scripture of the New Testament, state that a Christian minister must be “the husband of one wife”. And, the plain, canonical sense of the word “husband” means “a man married to one woman”. There are only two possible outcomes when this standard is applied to GAFCON’s present membership: either Provinces such as Uganda, Australia, and others must be made to conform their ordination theologies and practices to the New Testament or, just as Katherine Jefferts-Schori does, the New Testament must be made to conform to what GAFCON’s members do. The Declaration, however, gives no clue as to which option GAFCON is going to select.

“3. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

The Eastern Orthodox say there are seven, not four, Ecumenical Councils. The Roman Catholics recognize those same seven, they just add twenty or so of their own local councils and label those, too, as “ecumenical”. So both major branches of the Universal Church are agreed that there are no fewer than seven Ecumenical Councils. Where GAFCON has decided to part company with three-fourths of all living Christians, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect it to explain why it did so?

“7. We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.”

But that “classic Anglican Ordinal” states that the “historic succession” is made up of men. So that brings us back to the “heuristic” problem – the problem of interpretive principles, or rather, of the lack of such principles – already discussed under Paragraph 2.

And how is the “classic Anglican Ordinal” upheld by another prominent GAFCON leader, Abp. Peter Jensen of Sydney, Australia, who teaches that ordination itself is unnecessary because laypeople may celebrate valid Eucharists?

“11. ... We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.”

Well, since the Jerusalem Declaration gives us no guidance as to what “orthodox faith and practice” mean, this paragraph is just a feel-good statement. Since, as to Alice’s Red Queen, the words may mean whatever the writer wants them to mean, and since to some of GAFCON’s most prominent figures they may include both beliefs and practices that, until recently, all Anglicans universally rejected, what principled basis are we left with for saying that Katherine Jefferts-Schori’s beliefs and practices are not equally “orthodox”?

The problem is that just as frustrated traditional Roman Catholics talk about “supermarket Catholicism”, where the worshipper as shopper takes only what he wants and leaves on the shelf anything that doesn’t appeal to his personal taste, so GAFCON brought together in Jerusalem many who actually expound “supermarket Anglicanism”. That is what renders meaningless a statement such as:

“12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters.”

Since GAFCON does not tell us which issues are “primary” and which are “secondary”, and since some of the best-publicized GAFCON leaders think that an issue such as the nature of the sacramental ministry can be “secondary”, we are left to conclude that absolutely anything on which we disagree is “secondary”. But if everything is “secondary”, then nothing is “primary”; in other words, we actually have no fundamental beliefs, just esthetic preferences of the moment.

“13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.”

Since GAFCON either does not know what “orthodox” means or, if it does know, it is unwilling to say what it is, it is going to be very difficult to find anyone who can be shown to “have denied the orthodox faith”. If that faith has no fixed or certain content, then there is no way anyone can show persuasively that Katherine Jefferts-Schori, who says that she is “orthodox”, is not telling the truth.

Supporters of GAFCON claim it is a great step forward and say its critics are being unfair. What these people overlook is that the crisis in Anglicanism, indeed, the crisis in modern Christianity in general, is not about specific distasteful teachings and practices or even about one deviate bishop in one New England state. It is about what lies behind those distasteful teachings and practices and what made it possible for a pervert to be elected a prelate.

“Epistemology” is a branch of theology and philosophy that examines the concept of Truth. It asks questions such as, “What does it mean to say that something is ‘true’? How do we test propositions that are offered as ‘true’? To what sources do we resort to discover potential ‘truths’?” Until recently, Catholic Christians, including Anglicans, have always looked to revelation as the primary source of Truth, have believed the plain meaning of Scripture is the principal record of that revelation, and have interpreted the Scriptural texts by first looking to the consistent understanding of the Universal Church that, under God’s inspiration, wrote that Scripture in the first place.

Within the lifetimes of many of us, however, that objective epistemology (truth method) has been replaced, first within PECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada and now throughout most of the Lambeth Communion, with a new, subjective epistemology. This new method looks not to what the authors and millennia of worshippers have understood the texts to say but to how those texts conform to the worshippers’ personal lifestyle choices. Where once Christians were called to remake their lives into what God said they should be, now God is being called to remake His Word into what His worshippers say it should be.

GAFCON supporters tell us that women’s “ordination” is not a salvation issue, and offer only this as proof: GAFCON’s members cannot agree about it. But actually it is a “salvation issue”, as is the toleration of openly homosexual clergy. This is because those innovations, and others like them, can only be accepted by those who have first accepted the new epistemology, the one which says that which was false in our grandparents’ time is now true for us.

Those who accept either or both of these new things have no understanding of how Christians have always sought for, tested, and recognized Truth. But if a church group cannot lead its members to Truth, what possible use is it? What use are the discussions it has in public conventions or meetings?

And these tests for Truth govern all areas of the Church’s life. Once a church group has declared that Christianity’s distinctive interpretive methods do not apply to one issue, such as who is ontologically (“as a matter of ‘being’") capable of receiving ordination, that same group has given up all principled ways of judging other issues, such as morality. Then the rejection of previously unacceptable lifestyles ceases to be a moral judgment and is reduced to a merely esthetic one: they are distasteful.

But the “yuck factor” is not a reliable guide through life and to Heaven. Furthermore, a church group like GAFCON that has women's “ordination”, or that is in communion with those who have it, has a highly defective understanding of the very nature of the Church. So how can GAFCON’s leaders show Christ’s sheep the way back from the wastelands into safe pastures if they themselves do not know what sort of institution it is that they are supposed to be leading?

Their toleration of women’s “ordination” means they have a defective concept of the ministry and no understanding whatever of the nature of the Sacraments, or of the fact that it was Our Lord Himself who ordained the Sacraments for our welfare and salvation. Thus they are oblivious to the fact that when a church group tolerates women’s “ordination”, it will henceforth live with only the Sacraments of Baptism and, perhaps, Matrimony. Prideful and disobedient, it thereby rejects the other five Sacraments Our Lord has ordained as His means of bringing Grace to us.

The struggle over the meaning of Truth is the great battle of our time; individual issues, such as women’s “ordination” and buggering bishops are merely particular manifestations of the new interpretive techniques. Yet both the GAFCON “Final Statement” and the “Jerusalem Declaration” are completely silent about it. In vague, uncertain, inconclusive terms they dance around the symptoms, all the while utterly ignoring the real cause of the disease. They offer cool compresses for our heated brows while they pretend there are no germs that caused our raging infection. So long as they refuse to bring in the surgeons and the antibiotics, and prescribe placebos, they let the patient die.

We Still Don't Get It, Mike Says

Thanks to Prof William Tighe for pointing out this recent post on Mike Liccione's blog, Sacramentum Vitae. Mike, someone I hold very dear to my heart, and Fr Al Kimmel, of Pontifications fame, have been beating this same dead horse for a number of years now.

In effect, though I think they would deny it, they are saying Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are each entitled to make the claim of being the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, while perhaps each throwing a consolation prize to the other in their more charitable moments, but that Anglicans cannot make the claim of being part of the OHCAC, even without choosing to be exclusivist.

I'm not a dullard, but you're right Mike: I still just don't get it.

Anyway, here is what Mike has to say:

The Continuum is a traditional-Anglican blog whose contributors have, of late, grown gloomier than ever about the prospects of salvaging the Anglican Communion. Given the events surrounding this year's Lambeth Conference, that is probably inevitable. And I am very sympathetic with the concerns of the Continuum. But as a Catholic, I can't help noticing something pivotal that they still don't get.

Consider this peroration from a recent post there by Fr. Robert Hart:

Can they not see that the confusion of sexual identity comes from the world, not from the Holy Spirit? Can they not see that if a person's sex is irrelevant to the sacrament of Holy Orders, they cannot then make it relevant to the sacrament of Matrimony? If Connie can be a priest and father to God's people, why can Adam not marry Steve? If the entire Tradition of receiving God's word as taught from the beginning, when the earliest Fathers interpreted scripture, can be overthrown for the first, how can it hold its authority for the second? In fact, for anything?

Spot on, Padre. Given how women's ordination opens the way to gay marriage, both signify rejection of the Great Tradition—not just this or that aspect of it, but the very raison d'etre of it. Thus, Fr. Hart also says what I have long argued in my own way: "[t]he issue is one of rebellion against the authority of Almighty God, and the denial of his word. But, that rebellion did not begin when Gene Robinson's consecration was approved in 2003. It began when orthodoxy went from being taught authoritatively to being merely tolerated as one option among many." As a Catholic, I see the fundamental issue in Anglicanism today as the one raised by "progressive" Catholicism too.

For Anglican "reappraisers" and Catholic "progs," orthodoxy has become just "one option among many" in the Church. The more charitable among them might fitfully tolerate orthodoxy in the name of that deracinated form of Christian charity known as "inclusivity"; but having forsworn the very possibility of anybody's teaching orthodox doctrine irreformably, they resent anybody's purporting so to teach it. That is why my experience over the last thirty-five years has been that, when I present a clear, constant, yet currently controversial teaching of the Catholic Church as irreformable, progs see me as falsely arrogating to myself and my party within the Church the right to impose certain opinions and values on the rest of the Church. Having been reduced among them to a matter of opinion, they can neither receive nor present orthodoxy as such. Many of them no longer even know what the concept truly involves. Even when some orthodox doctrines are retained by the more temperamentally conservative among them, the authority with which those doctrines have been propounded, and which extends to other doctrines too, is no longer understood as such. Such people might, for a time, remain orthodox per accidens, in a historically transitory way; some surely do; but no member of their set of religious opinions is any longer, indeed cannot be, understood as permanently and definitively normative for the Church as a whole. For such a mentality, that Great Tradition which is the proximate object of "orthodoxy" becomes, sooner or later, a mythology outliving its time. That is the mentality destroying the Anglican Communion, and would destroy the Roman too if the progs had their way.

On that much, Fr. Hart and I are probably in full agreement. Nevertheless, his basic criticism of the Anglican reappraisers (and, to a degree, the "Global-South" reasserters as well) is, at bottom, not only my own about Catholic progs, but also of any and every brand of Anglicanism—and therefore of the brand he so eloquently represents.

After the peroration I block-quoted above, Fr. Hart invokes an old standby:

I believe in the word of God, as revealed by the Holy Spirit and received and understood by the Church Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est- "What has been believed everywhere, always and by all."

That last quotation-within-a-quotation is the well-known "Vincentian Canon." Some time ago, I complained on this blog about use of the VC as "theological sloganizing," but what I was reacting to in that post is not precisely what Fr. Hart is doing. What he's doing with the VC is something I criticized in a related post a few months later.

Against an argument adduced by Orthodox scholar Perry Robinson, I wrote (emphasis added now):

The VC states: "Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly 'Catholic,' as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally." Now that is obviously untrue if taken fully literally; some qualifying interpretation of it has to be given if its original, contextual meaning is to be explained fairly, and I gave that interpretation in my earlier post. Specifically, one needs to know what counts as "the Catholic Church" in order to know what the relevant logical extension of "everywhere, always, and by all" actually is. According to Perry, what relevantly counts as the Catholic Church for VC purposes is the set of sees founded by the Apostles. Now, was it literally true in the 5th century that each and every such see was always orthodox according to the VC? Of course not. At that time, the apostolic sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, as well as that of Constantinople, had been falling in and out of what even Orthodoxy considers heresy for at least a century. So if the VC is usefully applicable at all, it is applicable only to that communion of churches which, as "the" Church, had remained in the true Faith indefectibly. And which Church was that?

The question cannot be convincingly answered simply by an historical appeal to what this or that collection of sees, even apostolic sees, had "always" held. It can only be answered, if at all, by a theologically prior identification of what counts as "the" Church, so that the unfortunate heresies sometimes infecting this or that occupant of such sees do not weigh against identifying the relevant collectivity, the Church. But that identification, of course, is precisely what is at issue here. Accordingly, there is no convincing way to apply the VC while remaining ecclesiologically neutral. What counts as "the Catholic Church" for purposes of ascertaining how VC should be interpreted cannot be effectively addressed by interpreting and applying the VC in a manner logically independent of one's ecclesiological commitments.

Now Fr. Hart is neither Orthodox nor Catholic, precisely because he does not believe that either the Roman communion of churches or the Orthodox communion of churches is identical with "the" Church of Christ. Fr. Hart is, rather, what many theologians would call a "branch theorist"—a term he rejects because he believes his ecclesiology to be true doctrine, not mere theory. Thus he believes that the Roman communion, the Orthodox communion, and the Anglican Communion (of the good old days before women's ordination and sanctified sodomy, of course) are each "branches" of "the Catholic Church," i.e. the one Church of Christ. Correspondingly, he believes that the doctrinal content of orthodoxy is the faith of the "undivided" Church of the first millennium, which each of those branches has managed to preserve, though not always without an admixture of error. Of course, on this showing the Episcopal Church and perhaps even the Church of England are no longer part of the Catholic Church as Fr. Hart understands that term, precisely because they have abandoned the Great Tradition. Only the really traditional Anglicans, those whose position is exactly his or as close as makes no difference, still belong to the Catholic Church as that term is understood by branch theorists like himself. So in Fr. Hart's eyes, not only do neither of the two ancient communions claiming to be "the" Church count as such; only his minority party within the communion counting as the junior branch of the Church understands what the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" ('OHCAC' for short) professed in the Nicene Creed actually comprises. In effect, Fr. Hart purports to profess orthodox ecclesiology while rejecting the ecclesiological self-understanding of each of the three historic bodies he recognizes as branches of OHCAC. Even somebody who finds such a stance appealing for its irony has to see something amiss here. In my reply to Perry Robinson, I've already pointed to what's amiss.

I described the upshot in yet another post: "Like the finest vodka, this is private judgment distilled so effectively that one hardly knows when one is drinking it." As I explained in my essay Faith, Private Judgment, Doubt, and Dissent, what I mean by 'private judgment' is precisely what John Henry Newman meant. Since branch theorists believe they understand better than anybody else what the phrase 'one, holy, catholic and apostolic church' really means, they believe they understand what orthodoxy—i.e., adherence to the faith of said church—really entails better than either of the two ancient communions with unassailable claims to apostolic succession. Although such a position is absolutely untenable, it explains why branch theorists also merit a description that most of them believe applies to Anglicans less traditional than they: 'Protestants who think they're Catholic'.

My friend and fellow philosopher Scott Carson puts the problem better still:

...it is the great Protestant Burden, it seems to me, to maintain two incompatible ideas at the same time. On the one hand, it must be maintained that something called "the Tradition" is not to be located in any one time or place, but in all times and places, that is, it is what has been believed by everyone everywhere. That's what "catholic" means, after all: "universal". On the other hand, it must be maintained that, when it comes to deciding what, exactly, fits this description--well, then it's confined to one time and one place: it's me. If you start to do or to teach something that is not all that consonant with what I and my cronies have been doing and teaching, clearly the only explanation is that you have departed from "the Tradition". I can prove this, too, by showing you the documents and other artifacts that constitute the evidence of "the Tradition" and interpreting them for you in the proper way, not in the heterodox way that you interpret them. If you insist, for some perverse reason, that I am interpreting them wrongly, then I will just point out to you that their meaning is plain and that you are the one jumping through hermeneutic hoops to get it to come out your way, while I am simply looking at all the data in the plain light of day, with no interpretive lens other than sheer rationality.

Scott recognizes, of course, that such a game is not limited to Fr. Hart and his allies. A lot of people play it for very serious purposes. What must be kept in mind, however, is the mentality according to which neither of the two ancient communions with unassailable claims to apostolic succession can cogently claim to be the OHCAC, and therefore cannot rightfully demand adherence to their authority as necessary for orthodoxy, i.e., for adherence to the faith-once-delivered. According to said mentality, only certain people who have made a sufficiently careful study of theology and church history know what OHCAC, and with it orthodoxy, truly are. This kind of Protestantism is the opposite of unthinking fundamentalism and emotional pietism. But it is Protestantism all the same. The tragedy of it is how effectively it prevents its adherents from knowing that. It's why they still don't get it.