No Checks and Balances Here

“Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after this the Church succeedeth that which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.” (Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 5.VIII.2)

Richard Hooker has been both praised and blamed for creating the “Three-legged Stool.” I am not alone in rejecting this image of three equal legs as the meaning of Hooker’s own argument. But, not a few modern Anglicans have decided that this is the way best to summarize the essence of his teaching about epistemological authority, that is specifically, how we know the truth. As a result of this idea of a Three-legged Stool, some have created a system of checks and balances. Furthermore, they have recast the terms of this in endless and creative fashions, with no fidelity to anything but their whims.

The Three-legged Stool, by correct definition, is “Scripture, Right Reason and Tradition.” These three as sources of knowledge can rightly be said to come from Hooker’s work. However, the word “tradition” was not often used this way by Hooker himself, who used it sometimes in a negative way referring to excesses and distortions associated with the papists of his times. It is, however, quite correct to use the word “Tradition” for the collective mind of the Church, and therefore the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2: 16), and in this way to understand part of Hooker’s meaning in the words, “the Church by her ecclesiastical authority.”

Nonetheless, the problem with the Three-legged Stool is, as I said, that it carries the idea of three equal legs. For Hooker the idea of equality among these three things was simply wrong. The Scriptures have the highest place of authority, for in the Scriptures it is God Himself who speaks, since the word of God is directly revealed there, teaching and setting forth “all things necessary for salvation.” Second, to Hooker, is Reason. In light of the whole of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity we must add the word “right.” Right Reason (see Books 1.VIII.3, and 3.IX.3), rather than simply reason, is best understood in light of the opening chapters of Book II, where he teaches that wisdom, as it is explained in the Proverbs of Solomon, and mentioned in other passages of the Bible, includes more than simply what is revealed in scripture. It includes knowledge of the natural world, and practical matters of understanding. We can draw from this that a mad man possesses reason, but not Right Reason (the same may be said of an untrustworthy Enthusiast, whose claims to private revelation defy credibility if only on the basis of his apparent instability). We can draw, as well, that Right Reason placed after Scripture, rules out the notion that human reason is equal by its own weight to the Word of God.

That the teaching and authority of the Church comes third tells us that to Hooker, only a mind enlightened by the Word of God and possessing Right Reason responds truly to the teaching and authority of the Church. So he says in Book 3.IX.3:

“Is it a small office to despise the Church of God? ‘My son, keep thy father’s commandment,’ saith Solomon, ‘and forget not thy mother’s instruction: Bind them both always about thine heart.’ It doth not stand with the duty we owe to our heavenly Father, that to the ordinances of our mother the Church we should show ourselves disobedient. Let us not say we keep the commandments of the one, when we break the law of the other: for unless we observe both we obey neither.”

In this way, he upholds not only the teaching of the Church (to which we add the words, Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est: “What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”), but also, what he calls “her ecclesiastical authority,” not to be redundant, but to extend the meaning to include Government and Canon Law.

False notions

The first mistake concerning the Three-legged Stool is conveyed by the image itself. Hooker taught a hierarchy of authority with Scripture at the highest place, Right Reason as second because it is necessary that the word of God communicate to human minds, and what we call Tradition, but that he called the Church, as the third. (Yes, Hooker meant as well to include the Church’s Government and Canon Law, but for purposes of Epistemology these need to be placed on the back burner.) However, not everyone means to imply equality when using the phrase “Three-legged Stool.” Here the weakness of analogies as a method can meet with innocence. But, the image tends to convey equality nonetheless. Better we should think of a small ladder with three rungs. The revelation of Holy Scripture is the highest rung. This is essential and absolutely necessary to understand because of the deceptive ways in which this idea of three sources of authority is misused. It is misused every time that it is applied as a system of checks and balances.

When used this way it is a method for any party that wants to eliminate from authority the disfavored commandments of God. They find that the Scriptures are against their innovation. So, they pretend that the Scriptures can be weighed either against Tradition or Reason. Furthermore, because Tradition cannot be used as easily as Scripture itself- by misapplication and sophistry of “interpretation”- they replace Tradition with Experience, pretending that these two mean the same thing. The result is a new “Three-legged Stool” of Scripture, Reason and Experience, always put forth as “the historic understanding of comprehensiveness in Anglicanism.” But, in fact, it is nothing but a new invention of dishonest minds relying on the credulity of the uneducated. It is sophistry, not wisdom; a sales-pitch, not teaching; politics, not doctrine. It is a wide gate and a broad path that leads to destruction.

By this means, every teaching of Scripture can be ruled out, whether it is the fact that a bishop must be the husband of one wife rather than simply the spouse of one spouse, or that only when a man cleaves to his wife are the two made one flesh. By claiming that “reason” or “experience” teach things contrary to Scripture, and that these two “legs” must be weighed against that one “leg,” they manage to overthrow all true teaching whenever it stands in the way of Satanic progress.

The older perpsective

It was relayed to me that a popular blog (weak in theology and content) contained an article in which one of their writers claimed that she did not worry about the Anglican Catechism having always taught that two of the sacraments are “generally necessary for salvation,” because for her the scriptures were good enough. What she really meant was not the scriptures, but her very limited understanding of the scriptures. Then she said that for Anglo-Catholics the scriptures are not enough: “They need something from tradition too.” This is not a “liberal” speaking, but rather a sort of theological “new conservative” whose foundation is every bit as innovative as that of the revisionists. She decides for herself what is and is not “a salvation issue” with absolutely no regard for the Anglican heritage she claims as her own. This is also a misuse of the Three-legged Stool as a system of checks and balances.

The Catholic mind of a Traditional Anglican does the opposite of what this writer said. For us the tradition is not enough; we must also be persuaded by Scripture. But, this is in response to what the writer meant when she used the word “tradition.” She thinks of the tradition in strictly superficial terms. For such people, the tradition is only as old as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the 1940 Hymnal, the pattern of church buildings and other practical matters to do with how we carry out the Form in which we worship God together. But these things are not the Tradition, even though they are traditional.

When we really understand it is sufficient to say, simply, the Tradition. However, for the sake of clarity and communication, it is not always possible to speak this way to everyone. The Tradition always refers to teaching; it is a purely doctrinal Tradition. As such it safeguards the validity of the Sacraments, and in fact cannot continue without them, nor they without it. Properly understood, even the three things put forth by Hooker are within the Tradition. The Scriptures, Right Reason and the Church-with-her-Authority live inside this Tradition, that is, the teaching carried on along with the Apostolic Succession from age to age. Our liturgical life has taken useful forms due to the wisdom of Right Reason that helped the Church to form them in the earliest years, and that has from time to time and place to place given variety in details according to the needs of the people. But, always, within the Tradition, it is the same Gospel, the same Sacraments, and the same Teaching commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ, quickened and empowered by the same Holy Spirit, taking us into the presence of God the Father. In a sense, speaking of the Scriptures and the Tradition as two separate things is itself a mistake. The Scriptures are part of the Tradition, and these speak not with voices that must be weighed against each other in the scales. These speak to us with the one voice of God. And, as wisdom teaches, they cannot contradict or vary.

Atheism and stupidity

Two recent articles in the Washington Post point to the intellectual weakness of the growing atheist movement in the United States and in England. To any truly philosophic mind atheism is not an option, ruled out by all reason and evidence. With reason and evidence set aside, a person must draw his arguments from badly construed logic based on a false premise. This is why I have never met an argument for atheism that I could treat with any respect, and I have met the best of them.

The logical weaknesses mentioned in these two articles are glaring and obvious. The first article by Mary Jordan contains one of the best examples of feeble mindedness to date, namely the inability to make clear distinctions of fact. Take this paragraph as an example, since most of the article (which drags on to be needlessly long, and cries out for better editing) revolves around it.

"Many analysts trace the rise of what some are calling the 'nonreligious movement' to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The sight of religious fanatics killing 3,000 people caused many to begin questioning -- and rejecting -- all religion."

In other words, because Muslims are actually carrying on with the same violence we see in the historical Mohammed himself, a man who rejected both Judaism and Christianity, today's atheist uses the terrorism of Islam as an excuse to reject the same religions Mohammed persecuted. An inability to make the distinction between Christianity and the Wahabi sect of Islam indicates an intellectual handicap. Excuse making is a form of intellectual laziness, and anyone who fails to see the logical fallacy of such an argument demonstrates nothing more than either one of two faults: Either such a person is genuinely stupid, or he simply confuses his tastes with evidence. Because he does not like something he concludes that he can ignore it into a state of non-existence (and the fallen nature of man really does not like God, even when it is aware of needing him) .

Another problem is that of intellectual dishonesty. In the second article by Jacqueline L. Salmon, we are reminded of the fact that Christopher Hitchens distorted the writings of Mother Teresa (either intentionally, or because he had no understanding of what he was trying to read), and came to an embarrassingly foolish conclusion:

"Focusing fresh attention on atheism in the United States was the publication last week of a book about Mother Teresa that lays out her secret struggle with her doubts about God. 'Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light' has led some high-profile atheists to say that her spiritual wavering was actually atheism.

" 'She couldn't bring herself to believe in God, but she wished she could,' said Christopher Hitchens, a Washington-based columnist and author of 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,' the latest atheist bestseller."

About this I have already written on this blog, along with a link to a better review than Hitchens was capable of producing. How can a man with an atheist agenda understand the darker side of hagiography? It is like a man born blind trying to understand distinctions in color.

The article itself engages in intellectual dishonesty by a false comparison:

"In the past two years, five books touting atheism have hit the bestseller lists, outselling such religious tomes as Pope Benedict XVI's book on Jesus, and popular Christian novelist Tim LaHaye's latest book, 'Kingdom Come,' according to Nielsen BookScan."

Considering the small amounts of affirmative reading available to atheists, it is very easy to pick any specific Christian author and compare the sales of those books to the relatively narrow selection of anti-religious offerings, and boast about the results. It is a form of misinformation. I wonder how these atheist books compare with the world's constant best seller, The Bible.

Intellectual dishonesty is found at its sharpest in this second article by this little bit:

"Javier Sanchez-Yoza, 21, a biology major at George Mason University, is a former born-again Christian who gave up his belief in God two years ago and is starting an atheist club at school. He turned atheist after growing skeptical of Christian friends' arguments for creationism.

" 'If they can be wrong about creationism, what else can they be wrong about?' Sanchez-Yoza said."

So, because this man cannot believe in a literal six twenty-four hour days of creation, and in Adam and Eve as history, he has decided that there is no God. I suppose that this man can share the blame with Fundamentalists who cannot make the necessary distinctions either; but the Fundamentalists are seen as stupid, while this man, who makes the same error in logic, considers himself to be among, as they call themselves, "the brights."

Let's face it: Atheists are really boring, especially when they attempt to sound clever.

...with all thy mind

Anglican mission work has been successful in college towns to a degree that many church traditions have not. One of the chief attributes of our ethos is that we seem to thrive where the mind is challenged. Traditional Anglicans have never feared the arena in which intellectual prowess is required to defend the Faith. We have never feared the progress of science, the difficult questions of philosophy, the theory of evolution, or debates with atheists. In order to evangelize in the modern world it is necessary to have a tough and strong faith that stands up under the pressures of modern thought. But, in very recent years we have been given an ironic challenge: To withstand modern prejudice of the most "enlightened" kind as it comes to us from the age of higher illiteracy- the sort of illiteracy that only a very modern college can provide. In a time when people earn degrees that demonstrate no true education, but rather an amount of indoctrination, the time has come to recognize that modern education itself will collapse unless it is revitalized by its historical source, the Christian Church that created it in the first place.

A few years ago I spoke with a young woman who was majoring in English at the University of Maryland, and listened to her describe what she had been taught in a class on the works of William Shakespeare. Did she learn to appreciate his ingenious economy of words? Did she understand the meaning of his stories, whether the tragedy of Hamlet, a man who could not make up his mind, or the irony of MacBeth -how the promises made by the weird sisters were deceptive in their accuracy, and brought about their own punishment? Did she understand the guilty abdication of King Lear and the fruit of his sin visited on his own head? Did the comedies provide for her any pleasure, such as A Midsummer Nights Dream? The extent of her understanding of Shakespeare was simply this: She learned that it was important to detect the bias of "white male literature." The course was not intended to educate, but to do the very opposite. Instead of helping the mind to learn and grow, the course stifled the mind with irrelevance and the higher illiteracy of "enlightened" bigotry.

Saint Paul wrote to the Church of Rome that they needed to offer themselves to the Lord; that this was their reasonable liturgy of prayer that involves the whole of life poured out to God. But, in order to do so, they had to renew their minds (Romans 12: 1, 2). To think as a Christian is not easy, especially in this era. We live in a time in which many people catch their opinions (or, as they say, their feelings) the way that one catches a virus. To assimilate the bias of modern “civilization” requires no effort, because we are surrounded by sound bites and other forms of subliminal propaganda. Ideas are fed into our minds before we know what has happened, and we never had to think. The use of Right Reason, along with Scripture and Tradition, as the authoritative way to learn and know the truth, is an art and discipline that takes effort. It requires the effort of refuting wrong ideas, and the more serious task of learning the truth.

In many ways, to think with a Christian mind is as defiant as human flight. It seems unnatural to wrestle the powers of gravity, to take off and soar, and then to land. Indeed, a pilot must intend at every moment of flight to keep the airplane up, and must work to do so, or it will come crashing down. That is what it is like to think with a renewed mind, that is, with a Christian mind. It requires intention and effort to defy the gravity of the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, which uses every means to abolish thought. Thank God that we have been given help. We have at our disposal a rich collection of writing that is suited for our times, with keen intellectual prowess and prophetic insight, yet written for the common man.

We cannot expect the young students of this age to grapple with our theologians, such as Francis Hall and Eric Mascall, until they have learned to think (which may require unlearning many anti-intellectual habits of the modern university system). We do have writers who can reach across the divide, however. And, as always, one name stands out in particular. Chief among the most relevant and helpful of modern writers was the great Anglican thinker, C.S. Lewis.

A great deal of attention has been drawn to his fictional works, by, of all unlikely sources, Disney studios. And, indeed, his fictional writing is excellent. In addition to the Narnia stories, his space trilogy contains one of the greatest English novels of modern times, That Hideous Strength. Even in works of fiction, his Christian philosophy is expressed in the clearest of terms, containing the prophetic element by which his critique of modern (or post modern) anti-culture becomes more relevant as time passes, than during his lifetime. Yet, even more helpful still, in any honest endeavor to sharpen mental faculties, is his non-fiction, which comprises the bulk of his extant published works. In order to jump in and benefit from a good collection of his best thinking, no better book with which to begin is the collection of essays published under the title God in the Dock.

In one volume, the reader is given a sample of Lewis as theologian and philosopher, as moralist and social critic. His religious devotion and literary knowledge contribute to the overall understanding of the man, and of his renewed Christian mind, in such a way as to help the mental pilot who is only just learning to keep his mind soaring above the gravity of a fallen world. Of course, before making the effort of reading Lewis- easy to do as he combines light reading with heavy thinking in a most engaging style- the decision to fly must first be made. One must first decide that it is the religious duty of Christians to learn and to think. But, remember, flying, though requiring intention and effort, can be quite pleasurable.

Getting back to the need to save education from the bigotry, intellectual laziness and indoctrination of this age; just as I said about seminaries I say about the university system in the modern world. We must not simply equal the accredited institutions of alleged higher learning; we must surpass them. In very practical terms, students need history and classical languages, since linguistic roots are essential knowledge to anyone who wants to understand serious thought. Why would I even bring this up among Continuing Anglicans who are trying to grapple with the problem of clergy education, and keep their own churches afloat? Who better?

Religion and the Common Good

This talk was delivered by Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver, at the John Cardinal Krol Conference in Philadelphia on April 21. It it is a must read.

"We most truly serve the common good by having the courage to be disciples of Jesus Christ. God gave us a free will, but we need to use it. Discipleship has a cost. Jesus never said that we didn’t need a spine. The world doesn’t need affirmation. It needs conversion. It doesn’t need the approval of Christians. It needs their witness. And that work needs to begin with us. Bernanos said that the 'scandal of Creation [isn’t] suffering but freedom.' He said that 'moralists like to regard sanctity as a luxury; actually it is a necessity.' He also said that 'one may believe that this isn’t the era of the saints; that the era of the saints has passed. [But] it is always the era of the saints.'

"The only thing that matters is to be a saint. At least we can try. And if we do, God will take care of the rest."

Read it all here.