An Important New Book on Women's Ordination

One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life. 

                                     

In the debate over the ordination of women, the battle in ostensibly conservative ranks has been argued on two levels, exegetical and theological.   Evangelicals have tended to focus on the former,  with "complementarians" defending the traditional view and "egalitarians" arguing for the novel practice of ordaining women to pastoral leadership, while Catholics (Roman, Orthodox and Anglo) have tended to focus more on theological, and specifically ecclesiological/liturgiological considerations.  My friend William Witt, an Anglican theologian and professor at Trinity School for Ministry, has been working on a defense of the innovation based on both theological and exegetical considerations. 

Both sides would agree that the created order, and specifically the role of men and women in society, the household, and the church, reflects certain truths about the Triune Godhead and the relationship between Christ and the Church.  The argument is essentially that if you have wrong ideas about the Trinity and Christ, you're going to have the wrong ideas about the relationship of men and women in society, the household and the church.  And, vice versa, if you hold wrong ideas about the relationship of men and women in society, the household and the church, this will adversely impact your orthodoxy in the areas of triadology and christology.

Concerning the former, the question is whether the divine ontology is "egalitarian" or in some sense "complementarian."  Both sides say they embrace orthodox trinitarianism, and therefore the consubstantiality and full divinity of the three Persons.  The argument is whether or not there is an eternal, functional subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father.  This issue is not to be confused with ontological subordinationism, which both sides would agree is a heresy. 

I mentioned above how our view of the role of men and women in society, household and church can impact our view of the Godhead.   Egalitarians, being egalitarians,  accordingly tend to NOT want to find ANY kind of complementarianism or subordinationism in the Holy Trinity and will stress that each person of the Godhead is autotheos, an orthodox term that stresses the consubstantiality and full divinity of the three Persons -  or, their "equality" if you will.  On the consubstantiality and full divinity of the three Persons we can agree.  The issue is how we are to avoid the heresy of polytheism, and, if we're Evangelical egalitarians who accept the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, what we do with the doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father and the eternal procession or "spiration" of the Spirit from the Father (and the Son, if we're Westerners).  And this is where it gets tricky.

As near as I can tell, it was the Evangelical egalitarian theologian Gilbert Bilezikian, author of Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible Says about a Woman's Place in Church and Family, who first set forth the argument that any claim to base a complementarian view of the role of women in household and church on the nature of the Holy Trinity is to have embraced the old heresy of subordinationism.  That argument, however, was powerfully countered by an article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, A Defense of the Doctrine of the Eternal Subordination of the Son, by Stephen D. Kovach and Peter R. Schemm, Jr.  The authors argue that, in fact, the orthodox triadology defended by St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and other Church Fathers, which theology is reflected in the wording of the Creed, entails an eternal and functional subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, but not an ontological one, and that this understanding shows up in a number of places in Holy Scripture, both with respect to the relationship between the Father and Son, and the relationship between man and woman.  In order words, orthodox triadology is "complementarian", not "egalitarian".  I urge everyone to read the Kovach/Schemm JETS article linked above.

And then, having read that, I urge everyone to purchase One God in Three Persons, which fleshes out in a number of articles the thesis of the Kovach Schemm article.  I was alerted to this book by an egalitarian friend who posted a reference to it on his Facebook page and made a comment there to the effect of, "See, here's proof positive that the complementarians are heretics as to their view of the Trinity."  But it isn't so.  The view of functional subordinationism defended by Kovach, Schemm and the contributors to this volume are merely setting forth the orthodox view of the Trinity.  And if it is true that Kovach et al. are defending the orthodox view of the Trinity , a certain conclusion about the egalitarian view follows from that, one that applies to Anglican defenders of women's ordination to the priesthood, if in fact they utilize the arguments of Bilezekian et al. 

A detailed (though not unbiased) review can be read here.

No. Just . . . No

Whatever took place in the first century with respect to the charismata, it wasn't this.  This is the furthest thing from "decently and in order", I don't care what its defenders say.

The Anglican Beer Club

Jan. 4, 2016 Update: What Does the Bible Really Say About Alcohol?

________________________________________

A photo of last night's meeting at Comrade Brewery with the Anglican Beer Club, Denver, CO.  Bishop Stephen Scarlett, Ordinary of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity, Anglican Catholic Church, Original Province, is to my right.  It happened that his birthday was the next day, and it was fun embarrassing him by singing "Happy Birthday". Everyone in the room joined in. I met two military chaplains, one of whom, a fellow Anglican deacon, works at a Marine hospital in Camp Pendleton.  The latter chaplain (the fellow with the clerical collar to my left) is a retired Navy pilot and Vietnam vet, who left the business world to become a military chaplain.  He and I swapped stories about our experiences as chaplains.  At times we had tears in our eyes as we both noted how the Lord has blessed us so richly by the privilege of being chaplains.  He and I will likely be in close contact in the future.

      

Unfortunately, when I posted this photo on Facebook, we were attacked on his Facebook page by a certain ACNA priest, with support from his bishop,  for "ungodly" behavior, in fact, for behavior which differs in no substantial respect, these folks said, from attending a strip club.  I kid you not.   The result of that broadside was that several of us got caught up in a rancorous and uncharitable dustup over the propriety of an Anglican beer club.  To their credit, our opponents are concerned about the nation's alcoholism epidemic, a concern I share as a hospital chaplain.  Things got out of hand however.  After an initial blast from these Anglican folks condemning the idea of an Anglican beer club, I ended up making some comments  that I wish I had not, and I'm guessing the same is true with folks on the opposing side.  I have removed my comments, and happily it appears at this writing that the parties involved are moving toward reconciliation (though the priest who instigated the brouhaha has seen fit to block me at Facebook).  I am glad and relieved to retract angry and uncharitable words, and to ask for forgiveness.  What I cannot retract, however,  is my position.

Anglicanism is not Finneyism.  C.S. Lewis, who regularly drank with Anglican clergymen sporting their collars, had this to say about teetotalism:

Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened 'Temperance', it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning. . . .

I have always in my books been concerned simply to put forward 'mere' Christianity, and am no guide on these (most regrettable) 'inter-denominational' questions. I do however strongly object to the tyrannical and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial (what I believe you people call 'small town'). Don't they realize that Christianity arose in the Mediterranean world where, then as now, wine was as much a part of the normal diet as bread?

What would Jesus do?

And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me. And he left all, rose up, and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them. But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.

In his blog article "Your Pastor in a Pub?", Randy Robinson writes:

So your pastor preaches a great sermon on Sunday morning. He is clearly in touch with God and his delivery of God's word touches your life. You find yourself drawn into a deeper walk with the Lord.

Then you go to lunch and there's your pastor sitting in the bar, smoking a cigar and drinking a beer.

Uh oh.

If you're in a mainstream evangelical church, this would be scandalous. Yet in many of these same churches, C.S. Lewis is quoted, adored and celebrated. With The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe showing in theaters, Lewis mania has peaked. . . .

Lewis never advocated drunkenness or addiction. Instead, he maintained a balanced -- and dare I say Biblical? -- view of everything, including drinking. He defended it as ferociously and artfully as such essential Christian behaviors as forgiveness and charity. (He had a harder time defending smoking and tried, unsuccessfully, to give it up, but he never castigated it as "sin.")

Lewis is arguably the most influential modern-day disciple. His writings provoke deep thought. They encourage a more meaningful relationship with God. They have even led many hardened skeptics to a spiritual conversion. But his personal behavior remains puzzling to some Christians.

So next time you hear someone praising or quoting C.S. Lewis, picture the man who sat in a pub drinking, smoking, and penning some of the most powerful words since Paul wrote his letters to the early church.

Douglas Gresham, Lewis' stepson, summed up his famous father's attitude recently in an interview with Christianity Today:

The problem with evangelical Christianity in America today, a large majority of you have sacrificed the essential for the sake of the trivial. You concentrate on the trivialities--not smoking, not drinking, not using bad language, not dressing inappropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn't give two hoots for that sort of bullshit. If you go out and DO Christianity, you can smoke if you want, you can drink if you want--though not to excess, in either case.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Tip of the pint glass to Mr. Robinson.

For what it's worth, here's a a lesson on μεθυσθῶσιν as it occurs in St. John's account of the wedding at Cana, John 2:1-11, and some further comments about the influence of the Temperance Movement in the Finneyite brand of Evangelical Christianity:

"And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." - KJV

The teaching of Holy Scripture on the question of alcohol consumption is pretty easy to understand. On the one hand, habitual drunkenness is condemned, but alcohol: 1) consumed in small amounts for health reasons; and 2) consumed in larger and sometimes mildly to moderately intoxicating amounts on celebratory occasions is considered a gift of God. See Prov. 20:1; Psalm 104:15; the text above, I Tim. 5:23 and Eph. 5:18 for representative texts from the Old and New Testaments.

Until the advent of the American Temperance Movement, no Christian exegete or theologian, or none that I know of anyway, would have ventured to suggest that the wine consumed at the wedding of Cana was anything but an alcoholic beverage, or that the attendees weren't drinking wine in copious, celebratory amounts. The word μεθυσθῶσιν (English transliteration "methusthōsin") used in this text ("they have well drunk" according to certain sanitizing translations) means that those celebrating the wedding at Cana were drinking alcoholic wine, not grape juice.  It literally means "have gotten drunk", not "have well drunk."

Citing Romans 14:21, the principal concern over at the Facebook discussion was that our beer club sends the wrong message to to the weak and to alcoholics.  Apparently, however,  Jesus was unconcerned about how His facilitation of the flow of wine to people who had already copped a buzz at a wedding celebration sent the wrong message to the weak and to alcoholics, which means, for one thing, that these folks' exegesis and application of Romans 14:21 won't withstand a moment's scrutiny.  John Sawtelle provides us with the proper exegesis of this text:

Two questions need to be answered in order to get a handle on the meaning and application of this passage:
1) who is the "weaker brother"?
2) what does it mean to cause them to "stumble"?

Well, in order to handle this passage accurately, we need to understand this verse in relationship to the rest of the passage. In context Paul is exhorting the weak and strong not to engage in hostility and judging one another on account of how they either restrain or exercise (in the case of the strong) their freedom. So we need to answer the question, who are the weak and the strong? Well, the strong are converted Gentiles, who really don't have any scruples about diets or drinks. The weak are Jewish converts who living in an urban, metropolitan context, are unsure about where the meat sold in the market has come from. Because they are not sure if the meat was actually offered in sacrifice to a pagan god, they won't eat, thinking it could be defiled. Instead of eating meat, they eat vegetables according to the example of Daniel when he was in exile in Babylon (Daniel 1:8). So the weak are converted Jews and the strong are converted Gentiles.

So let's address the 2nd question now, what is it to stumble? Well, vv13-14 seem to help clarify that. Paul admonishes believers in v13 to not put stumbling-blocks in the way of a brother, and then clarifies the matter by saying in v14 that the issue is what a person thinks in his mind. If a brother thinks meat is unclean, then to him, it is unclean. In other words, he thinks that if he partakes of the meat, he is worshiping idols and thereby violating the 1st commandment, because of the strong association with meat and pagan worship in this gentile, pagan context. To cause that brother to stumble means that by eating meat in front of him, he may be led to eat meat, and by doing that, violate his conscience and sin against God for doing what he thinks is idolatrous. Just to be clear, he is not sinning because meat is intrinsically evil, he is sinning because he thinks eating meat is a form of participating in the worship of the god to whom the meat was offered to.

Let's take that information and plug it into the prohibition against wine. Douglass Moo in his outstanding commentary on Romans argues convincingly that the "wine issue" in this passage is not about scruples of conscience over whether it is permissible to consume alcoholic beverages, it is about whether the wine has been offered as a libation in a temple sacrifice to a pagan god. Just as the weak refused to eat meat because they thought it was defiled on account of it being part of a sacrifice, so they refused to drink wine because they believed it to be defiled through an act of pagan worship. So again, causing a brother to "stumble" in the matter of wine is to coerce him to violate his conscience about wine by following the strong believers example of drinking a glass of wine. The sin is not drinking wine per se, any more than it would be a sin to eat meat; the sin is drinking wine thinking that it is defiled, and thinking that by drinking it one is participating in the worship of a false god.

To the argument that collared clergymen drinking in public is a "bad witness", I will respond by saying that in the short amount of time I've been attending the Anglican Beer Club, I've noticed that when we Anglican clergymen show up at a drinking establishment sporting our clericals, we get a lot of "looks" - and sometimes laughs -- from people there. I noticed it at the last event at Comrade Brewery. We pay it no mind, and by the time we left, not only had the whole place joined in our singing of "Happy Birthday" to Bishop Scarlett, but we started mingling with the crowd, Bishop Scarlett making introductions to a couple of tables and posing for a photo with one lady, and I struck up a conversation with the guy playing the Gibson SG.

       

I know for a fact that when we left that establishment, we had planted seeds in the minds of some - "Here were some Christians drinking beer, not shunning us, and friendly besides." Exactly what Jesus did when he attended the feasts that earned him the scorn of the Pharisees.  One of the reasons St. Matthew's Anglican Catholic Church, where Bishop Scarlett is the rector, has enjoyed exponential growth  is that they've had an aggressive outreach program in their community that includes feasts open to the public, where collared clergy come to share food, drink and smoke with the folks that show up. Moreover, their clergy aren't at all reserved in their wearing of clericals anywhere they go to eat or drink. Two nights ago when I observed Bishop Scarlett working the crowd, I knew that this was simply in keeping with St. Matthew's style of outreach, and that style of outreach is perfectly harmonious with what Jesus did.  Those who object to collared Anglican clergymen showing up at the local pub or microbrewery need to take the matter up with Jesus, and explain to him exactly why it was inappropriate for him to do what he did at the wedding in Cana.

Concerning their final argument, the founder of the Anglican Beer Club posted the wry comment, "Well, I guess this means they won't support the Anglican strip club that we've been considering."  ;>) It was obviously an absurd comparison, but again, our critics seemed to be opining from some sort of un-Anglican Finneyite framework. 

Anyway, if you're ever in Denver, the Club meets every Thursday night at one of the craft beer breweries in town.  Denver is in the top ten list of craft beer cities in the U.S., and we'd love to have you join us if you're able.  You can contact me through the blog email.   

Fr. J's Second Response to William Witt on "In Persona Ecclesiae"

Here.

It seems to be de rigeur to continue some of the errors of the polemicists into modern theology by making sharp distinctions between Eastern theology and Western theology on every point and presuming a facile pre schism harmony. There are so many points to be made here, I will try to limit myself to the central ones.

Witt performs a sleight of hand by making all his Eucharistic references to meal rather than to sacrifice. This is a convenient way to avoid all sacerdotal arguments against WO. The “Holy Table” is in both East and West an altar of sacrifice. Some liturgists who play fast and loose with the facts have suggested that the emphasis on sacrifice is a Western preoccupation. This is not born out in the prayers of preparation nor the Eucharistic prayers of the East, nor the imagery of the altar itself which is dominated not be a Last Supper but by an icon of the crucifixion. The loaf of bread is cut with a lance and the prayers of preparation make several references to the lamb of sacrifice.

So the paterfamilias is perhaps a bit of a type for the presiding priest or bishop. But the presidency of Bishop or priest over an assembly was the least part of what they do. No, they do not merely preside (stand over) at Eucharist, but they are priests of the sacrifice of calvary who offer this sacrifice to God. This is true in both East and West, where West excludes many Anglicans and the rest of the protestant world.

Similarly, the idea that the words of institution are somehow unimportant in Eastern liturgies is not born out in the gestures that accompany them. In some Eastern rites all the chants of the people cease during the words of institution so the congregation can hear them when apparently it is not crucial that they hear any other parts of the Eucharistic prayers. The Greeks actually kneel for the words of institution and in other rights the priest makes a solemn bow, touches the floor and crosses himself after the words are spoken over each of the elements, a progression of gestures which is found in no other part of the liturgy.

Thus, we have to look at the priestly antecedants of Christ, the apostles and their successors. These would be the Levitical priesthood of the Temple. Not only are they male, but the victims of their sacrifices also had to be all male.

Thus, it is not the liturgical tradition which sets up absolute distinctions between East and West but the polemical tradition–a tradition of contradistinction which is a relflection of the post Imperial East rather than the East of the undivided Church. Witt tries to play divide and conquer between East and West over WO. But, East and West will withstand his assaults because in reality they are not two opposing systems, but two complimentary (sic) ones.

Fr. J's first response here.

A Further Response to William Witt on "In Persona Ecclesiae"

In answer to those many Anglican folks in ACNA and elsewhere who seem to believe that William Witt has spoken the last word on the question of women's ordination to the priesthood, I noted here that it's far from the last word on the matter.  As one example from Anglican circles, I've referenced this article and combox discussion from the the Anglican Continuum as an example of how opposition to Witt's arguments, specifically to his notion that the president at the Eucharist stands in persona ecclesiae, is shaping up.  Today I found this article and combox discussion at a Roman Catholic blog.  Here is the text of the blog entry by "Fr. J" and salient quotations from the comments section:

Recently, Professor William Witt, an Episcopalian, has introduced a novel argument in favor of Women’s Ordination.

Historically, Orthodoxy has held that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae (in the person of the church), and that consecration takes place through the epiclesis.

Historically, the Western Church has held that the priest acts in persona christi, and that consecration takes place at the words of institution.

In ecumenical discussions/debates, this difference has long been a point of contention between East and West, with the East insisting that their position is correct, and that the West’s position is seriously mistaken.  In ecumenically agreed statements, the eucharistic model that has come to dominate in the last half century is the epicletic one, without explicit acknowledgment that this is a move toward the Eastern position.

During the second half of the twentieth century (and, to my knowledge, not before), Roman Catholic theologians began arguing that women could not be ordained because they could not represent Christ, i.e., could not act in persona christi.

Shortly afterward, Eastern Orthodox theologians who were opposed to WO, suddenly began adopting the Latin argument about women being unable to represent Christ, without acknowledging that this was yielding to a Latin understanding of consecration that they had fiercely resisted previously.

AFAIK, no one has ever argued that men cannot be ordained because a man cannot represent the female church when the priest acts in persona ecclesiae.  So, when arguing for ecumenical unity, Western theologians have increasingly adopted the Eastern model, with an endorsement of the epiclesis, and, by implication, an endorsement of the Easern position that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae. 

When arguing against WO, the same theologians (and now Eastern theologians) have insisted that women cannot be ordained because they cannot represent Christ, with an implied (or rather explicit) endorsement instead of the Western position, that the priest acts in persona christi.

But, then, logical consistency is not always a strong suit when people are trying to find new justifications for a committed position when the old one clearly will not do any more.  As they say, any stick will do to beat a horse.

Here is my response:

There is a clear coupling in the West of the concepts of in persona christi and the words of institution as the central act.  The Western understanding binds these two because the consecration refers to “my” body, “my” blood.  That is, the priest speaks in the divine first person.  This is also true in absolution. “I absolve you…”  Again, the divine first person, thus in persona christi.

The Eastern position does not have a corollary necesity between emphasis on the epiclesis and the priest functioning in persona ecclesiae.

The differences between Eastern and Western traditions on Eucharistic theology are matters of emphasis and are not mutually exclusive.  Prior to the schism, the differences in emphasis between East and West were well known and were accepted as different but valid.  This is clear in that the comprehensive discussions of between East and West currently under way do not include these particularities of Eastern and Western conceptions of Eucharistic theology.

Differences over the formulation of transubstantiation notwithstanding, both systems are recognized by both East and West as valid.  Furthermore, they are essentially differences of emphasis.  Can not a priest function both in persona christi and in persona ecclesiae simultaneously?  Can not the divine action at the Eucharist take place at both the epiclesis and the consecration?

There are two poor assumptions that Witt makes here:

1.  That any shift in emphasis on the part of the West from the words of institution toward epiclesis implies a shift from in persona christi toward in persona ecclesiae.  While Rome’s system links the two issues, the East does not.

2.  If a shift  toward an emphasis on in persona ecclesia is occuring at all officially (an I havent seen evidence for that), it is not in any case a denial of in persona christi, as these are complimentary conceptions, not mutually exclusive ones.

In short, my problem with Witt’s argument is the phrase “by implication:”

So, when arguing for ecumenical unity, Western theologians have increasingly adopted the Eastern model, with an endorsement of the epiclesis, and, by implication, an endorsement of the Easern position that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae. 

The argument from in persona christi against WO, still stands as it absolutely must.

Fr. J.

Comments:

Fr. Gregory says: 

Fr J,

Prof Witt’s argument you quote above is incoherent. The priest (presbyter) does not act in the name of the Church but of the bishop–who Himself stands in the place of God the Father (and those the historical honorific, “father” for both bishops and priests).

As for his contention that the institution/epiclesis has been a point of contention–he makes the same mistake that any number of converts to either Church seem to make–a reliance on polemics and an ignorance of practice. Yes, certainly there has been, and is, a debate on this point. But, as you point out, a debate (even a polemical one) does not mean a rejection of the validity of the other’s celebration of the Eucharist.

Prof Witt’s argument is simply absurd.

Michael says:

FATHER GREGORY; thank you for your helpful contribution. Perhaps, I am stretching my neck too far, but I will venture to add, hoping for your Imprimatur: the priest’s prayer while the people sing Cherubicon implies that he acts in persona Christi. The prayer is long, moving, and beautiful, and I am sorry that I have to cut it “to the point”. But here is the extract:

“And by the power of Thy Holy Spirit, enable me who am clothed with the grace of the priesthood to…celebrate the sacred mystery of Thy holy and most pure Body and precious Blood…. For onto Thee I come…make these gifts worthy to be offered to Thee, by me, thy sinful servant. For Thou art He that offers and He that is offered.”

Kucharek (Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) says that this prayer can be traced back to the 8th century Codex Barberini (p. 481). Eight centuries later the doctrine was adopted by the Council of Trent in its Decree on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (D. 940), and it was later taken up by Pius XII in the Encyclical Mediator Dei. One the other hand, it can be traced back to St. Augustine:

“Now as in this sacrament Christ is both giver and gift (for he gives himself to us), so also he is both what is offered and he who offers.” I took it from F.Clark: Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation, 1960, p.527.

On the other hand, it has always been the faith of the Catholic Church that the priest is at the same time the “Secondary Sacrificig Priest”, as well as the person acting on behalf of the Church, who unites herself with the Christ’s self-sacrifice. His prayers are predominantly the “we” – prayers, rarely “I” – prayers.

Michael says:

.FATHER GREGORY, here it is verbatim. I only vaguely know that I took it from an interview, probably while he was on the Lambeth Conference.

“For example, the question of women priests and bishops. Most Orthodox would say, we should not ordain women. But if you ask them why not, they will say that it has never been done; they will appeal to tradition. But you press them a little farther, and say that there must be a reason why women have never been ordained as priests. The argument from tradition merely tells you that they have never been ordained as priests, but it does not tell you why. Surely there must be some theological reason. On the one hand, the Orthodox are certain and clear in their answer. Most of us would say, no, we could not ever ordain women. Yet others would say, it is for us essentially an open question. We are not proposing to do so in the near future, but we need to reflect more deeply on it. If all we say is, “impossible, never,” we perhaps should ask ourselves, what are the implications for our understanding of human nature, of the difference between male and female, for our understanding of the priesthood and the relationship of the priest to Christ. That is an example of how your questions are perhaps to some extent also our questions. ”

Father, please, do not misunderstand me. It was not my intention to bring in this matter, but you started with that Greek lady, and I thought it would be of interest.

Witt misrepresents the Catholic position. The crucial reason is liturgical, which is not merely negative but normative (Inter Insignores 4/7). The main body of Catholic sacramental theology has been worked out, not from the NT, but from the insight into the sacraments as they are celebrated. Trent’s teaching that the Church has no power over the substance of the sacraments was repeated by Pius XII, and the CDF has brought the same point in the context of the ordination of women (ibid. 4/4). The Church hands on the received Message through her “doctrine, life and worship” (DV 8). I dare say this is the Orthodox position too, but not officially articulated.

The Church has never ordained women simply because she has no authority to do so. The Primary Minister of all sacraments is Christ – the human minister acts in His person. Other reasons are secondary and not essential.

As soon as I get some more time I’ll deal with Witt’s other fabrications.

Further to my comment on the 4th November (i.e. that the Church has no authority…), supposing a pope carries out what externally appears to be the rite of ordination of a woman, and supposing that woman “celebrates” what externally appear to be the Mass, who can guarantee that the bread and wine will become the Body and Blood of Christ, and that the rite itself will be Christ Self–Sacrifice? That it would be the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, instead of a great offence against God, from which offence neither those present, nor those absent, whether living or dead, would benefit.

Witt argues from the position of a non-believer, in the sense that the Transubstantiation, Christ’s Self-Sacrifice, and the benefits of it do not ensue, and the priesthood in true sense doesn’t exists. So, to him it doesn’t matter who is the celebrant: she or he is nothing but an appointee of the community.

And he says: “During the second half of the twentieth century (and, to my knowledge, not before), Roman Catholic theologians began arguing that women could not be ordained because they could not represent Christ, i.e., could not act in persona christi.”

No, it is the other way round. For nearly two thousand years, the Church has never come to the idea of ordaining women to the priesthood. It all started in the 5th or 6th decade of the last century, not in the Church but among Protestants in Sweden, thereafter among other Protestants, and the first response of the Catholic Church was the Paul VI letter to Dr. Coggan, of 30th November 1975, listing as the “fundamental reasons”: example of Christ, constant practice of the Church, and “her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with he God’s plan for his Church.”

The CDF took up the matter in 1976, saying: “As we are dealing with a debate which classical theology scarcely touched upon, the current argumentation runs the risk of neglecting essential elements” (Inter Insignores, Introduction, para 4), and starts immediately by putting concisely (ibid. para 5) what Paul VI wrote 1975: “ the Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.” It than goes on elaborating: constant Tradition (1), attitude of Christ (2), practice of the Apostles (3). It is followed by an insistence on the permanent value of all this (4), some aspects of which I mentioned last time: normative character of tradition, no power over the substance of sacraments.

My reading is that these are the fundamental reasons. Only then (6) the Declaration introduces the issue which Dr.Witt, seems to consider crucial, and attributes to theologians (who “begun arguing”); and explicitly (the issue, that is) “not…as demonstrative argument”, but as a clarification “by the analogy of faith” (6/1), explaining that the priest also acts in persona ecclesiae, “which is the Body of Christ,…precisely because he first represents Christ himself who is the Head and the Shepherd of the Church” (6/8).

The Declaration had usual approval of the Paul VI who “ordered its publication”.

Professor Witt says: “logical consistency is not always a strong suit when people are trying to find new justifications for a committed position”

Perfectly correct. He is more than an example, because he is not merely trying to argue a new justification from facts, but fabricates the facts themselves to find new justification.

The “in persona Christi” v. “in persona Ecclesiae”, are secondary issues; the doctrine would stand on very sandy ground if it depended on either of the two arguments. And he presents them as central.

But that aside, Witt doesn’t seem aware that the Orthodox view of the Epiclesis is not what he imagines. Here is Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy Ware: The Orthodox Church, 1972, p. 290):

“Orthodox… do not teach that the consecration is effected solely by the Epiclesis, nor do thy regard the Words of Institution as an incidental and unimportant…they look upon the entire Eucharistic Prayer as forming a single and indivisible whole…Thanksgiving, Anamnesis, Epiclesis – all form an integral part of one act of consecration. But this…means that if we are to single out a ‘moment of consecration’ such a moment cannot come until the Amen of the Epiclesis.”

Would Witt escape by saying: ok., but then the priest says the whole prayer in persona ecclesiae. No, because Christ prays with the Church as the Head of His Body. (“Why do you persecute Me?”) The priest prays as a consecrated minister of the Church – in persona ecclesiae, as well as an individual. But the Church is inseparable from Christ, so the priest acts in His person as well.

The Orthodox supposed emphasis on “in persona ecclesiae” doesn’t mean “only in persona ecclesiae”, doesn’t rule out “in persona Christi”. Nor does the Latin emphasis on “in persona Christi”, rule out “in persona ecclesiae”, as it is evident from the Inter Insignores quoted last time.

On the other hand, the Roman Canon has an invocation, analogous to Epiclesis in this prayer prior to the Institution:

Quam Oblationem, tu Deus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptbilemque facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus and Sanquinem fiat dilectissimi Filii tui Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

The only difference is that it is addressed to God to make the oblation acceptable to be the Body and Blood; while in the Epiclesis He is asked to send the Holy Spirit to do it.

Fr. J's second response here.

Justification and Grace in Bernard of Clairvaux

I have discussed here and elsewhere the fact that Augustine's theology on grace and free will has not only shaped the theology of the Latin West but has historically been accepted as a valid Catholic theologoumenon, even if many in the Catholic Church have opposed it.  The strength of Augustine's school in the Catholic Church waxed and waned over the centuries, but it gained new momentum in the late Middle Ages.  Bernard of Clairvaux was one such notable Augustinian, and Lutheran pastor Jordan Cooper writes here that many of Bernard's views on grace, however inchoate, foreshadowed the teaching of the Reformers.

Presbyterian theologian B.B. Warfield is famous, among many other things, for his statement that the Reformation represented the triumph of Augustine's view of grace over his view of the church.  Whatever seemingly logical developments took place in the Protestant churches (therein lies one of the problems with the Reformation) as a result of the Reformers' embrace of Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo wouldn't have approved of much that transpired in the Reformation, and he may very well have condemned the whole thing outright.  This is probably true of Bernard as well.

We have, as Anglicans, a way to unite the theology of sovereign, unmediated grace and that of the mediated sacramental grace of the Church.  We even have an pre-Reformation Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine, who with Bernard saw no conflict between the two.  And given our susceptibility to the Anglican Disease, it's time we get going on the project to restore Catholic authority in our church.

That was the word we received from the recent International Catholic Congress of Anglicans, and I was happy to see this statement from Arthur Middleton, whose paper was read there by Bishop Keith Ackerman (emphasis mine).

It has always been the Anglican claim that in faith and order the Anglican Communion is continuous in identity with the Primitive Church. It is no new Church. Today's contest is between modern liberal ecclesiology and the Anglican mind in a time when the majority of people in the Church and the nation have been brainwashed by the secular mind, which they use to displace the claims of the Anglican mind. It is the presuppositions of this secular mind and its politically correct ideology that is determining the Faith and Order of the Anglican Communion that must be displaced. This is not a matter of politics but a matter of faith and theology. Like the divines of the seventeenth century the way forward is by pursuing the Anglican way back to prescriptive sources by upholding Canon A5 which states that the doctrine of the Anglicanism is grounded in the Holy Scripture and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

Anglican and Other Resources on the Church's Historic Position Concerning an All-Male Priesthood

I have these linked at the bottom of the left sidebar.

Essays on the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood from the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth (pdf)

Homo Hierarchicus and Ecclesial Order (contact me to obtain a copy)

Packer: Let's Stop Making Women Presbyters

Lewis: Priestesses in the Church?

Streams of the River: Articles Outlining the Arguments Against the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood

Mascall: Women Priests?

An Exchange Between William Witt and Me on Women's Ordination

From the Anglican Church in North America Facbook page, June 2014, with minor revisions and additions:

Patricia Hanlon:

For those interested, I recommend Bill Witt's series of blog posts on women's ordination. Bill teaches systematic theology at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. Smart man, irenic to boot, and well worth engaging with, whether you agree or disagree! http://willgwitt.org/category/theology/womens-ordination/

Me:

I will hazard a guess that many posters here are aware of Dr. Witt's position on the matter and the arguments he's advanced to defend it. It's not the last word on the question of women's ordination to the priesthood by any stretch of the imagination.

William G. Witt:

I have been composing a series of articles that will eventually comprise a single coherent argument. However, in order to deal fairly with the arguments of those who are opposed to WO, it is necessary to address all the major objections one at a time. At this point, I am still in the process of responding to the Protestant objections of "complementarians." I have not yet even begun to address the Catholic arguments, which are a different kettle of fish entirely.

The argument by Fr. Latimer above is a Roman Catholic argument, i.e., the priest acts in persona christi, and so, a female priest cannot represent Christ. However, the Orthodox position is that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae, a position that has Anglican support as well, (e.g., R.C. Moberley). Modern agreed ecumenical statements, (e.g., ARCIC), have endorsed both kinds of language. The priest acts both in persona christi and in persona ecclesiae.

However, as everyone knows, the church as the Bride of Christ is feminine. If a male priest can represent a female church (in persona ecclesiae), and not be accused of being a "man in drag," then it makes no sense to suggest that a female priest creates a "lesbian wedding reception" (in persona christi). If a male priest can represent a female church, then a female priest can represent a male Christ.

The priest is an icon of Christ, but precisely as pointing away from him or herself to Christ, not as representing Christ by his or her gender. And a woman can do that just as well as a man.

At any rate, this is a big project. I have had to put it aside for awhile as I have had to deal with the normal end of semester tasks, but now that summer is here, I am already working on the next essay, which is a discussion of Ephesians 5.

Those who want the whole thing will just have to wait until the whole thing is done.

Me:

It should be noted in connection with Dr. Witt's observations about Catholic and complementarian arguments against WO that both camps' arguments represent authentic instances of "task theology" such as we see in St. Paul's argument against the Judaizers or the orthodox Fathers arguments against the Arians. That is to say, the arguments have arisen suddenly in response to unexpected challenges to the orthodox status quo, forcing the orthodox defenders to articulate what has in the past been less explicit but assumed as true. This is why Witt's insinuation that the "newness" of the Catholic in persona Christi argument militates against its validity is untenable. "Homoousion" was also "new" at the time, and was even rejected by the church in another theological context, but "homoousion" is now what we confess in the Creed nevertheless.

This is precisely the dynamic in Roman Catholic and Orthodox circles as their theologians "scramble" to answer the arguments of the pro-WO inside and outside of their ranks. One such work from a Catholic author that must not go unread is Manfred Hauke's Women in the Priesthood?: A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption. There are more recent works as well, but authors and titles have escaped me for now. The point is, if you're going to rely on the works of scholars such as Dr. Witt for scholarly authority, just understand that there are extremely able scholars on the other side currently "composing" arguments as well.

I have been asked why Anglican WO supporters should care about what the Catholics or Orthodox say or do. My response is that to the extent that Anglicanism is going to perpetuate the argument that it is merely one branch of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, then it better darn well care what the other two branches say and do. They say that this is a first order doctrine, and they act accordingly by not ordaining women to the priesthood. Woe to the Anglican supporter of WO who ignores them if they're right.

John M. Linebarger:

Fr. Christopher. . . , your points are well taken. However, I just like the way William G. Witt's mind works, even though I don't (yet?) agree with him on this point. He is always worth considering in detail, IMHO. Have you read his PDFs on Baptism? or on Anglican Theology? Wonderful syntheses.

Me:

I've read some of his lengthy blog articles and have his blog linked on mine. I agree with him on so much, just not this.

William G. Witt:

Christopher . . .

My objection against the Protestant complementarian and Catholic sacramental arguments against WO is not that they are new. All three positions -- pro-WO and the Protestant and Catholic anti-Wo -- are new positions in response to changes in the culture that did not exist prior to the industrial revolution. The historical argument was that women cannot be ordained because they are inherently inferior to men and subject to emotional instability. That position is no longer held by anyone. All sides in the debate now agree that women are ontologically equal to men. The question for women's orders is, in light of the abandonment of the historical reasons for opposition to WO, what should be the church's response?

The Protestant complementarian and Catholic sacamentalist response is to come up with new reasons to be opposed to WO. My problem is not that the arguments are new. It is that they are not convincing.

You mention Hauke's book. IMHO, the best summary of the Catholic anti-WO argument is Sara Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women. This book lays out the issues in a calm and non-polemical way,Butler is honest in acknowledging that a real shift has taken place in Catholic theology as a result of the affirmation of the ontological equality of women and that the traditional arguments against WO will not work. She acknowledges that the in persona christi argument first appeared in Paul VI's Inter Insigniores in 1976. Anglo-Catholics have embraced this argument, but it is based on an understanding of eucharistic theology that first appeared (to the best of my knowledge) in Thomas Aquinas -- an understanding that has been challenged or at least complemented in modern ecumenical discussion.

The Latin Medieval theological position that the priest acts in persona christi must at least be complemented with the Eastern Orthodox position that the priest acts in persona ecclesiae. Once that move is made, the objection based on gender representation collapses.

Me:

Thanks, Dr. Witt, for your clarification. Regarding my point concerning the task theology being done by Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians in response to pressure inside and outside of their ranks to ordain women to the priesthood, you write (emphases mine):

"My objection against the Protestant complementarian and Catholic sacramental arguments against WO is not that they are *new*. All three positions -- pro-WO and the Protestant and Catholic anti-Wo -- are *new* positions in response to changes in the culture that did not exist prior to the industrial revolution."

That was my point, however, when I referenced your argument against the "newness" of their defenses of a male-only priesthood.

Butler's work is one of the sources I was trying to think of in my last post. Thanks for that reminder. The other Roman Catholic scholar I was trying to recall who defends the traditional view is Monica Migliorino Miller, who is critical of certain aspects of Butler's work.  Another work by Orthodox scholars that Anglicans need to read is Women and the Priesthood (Thomas Hopko, ed.).

It hardly needs to be said that no one on our side of the fence, whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, will agree with your argument that once the Catholic view is complemented by the Orthodox view, "the objection based on gender representation collapses." It is not quite that simple.

I believe it was Fr. RJ Neuhaus who wrote words to this effect: "To the extent that one can say 'never' in this world, it is safe to say that the Orthodox will never ordain women to the priesthood." Same is true, I would say, of the Roman Catholic church in light of recent papal pronouncements and the way the ongoing task theology in Roman ranks in developing. And as I observed in my previous post, the Catholic and Orthodox churches believe this to be a belief of the "first order", and if Anglicanism truly believes itself to be a branch of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, the advocates of WO in its midst need to think longer and harder than they currently are about their position.

William G. Witt:

I have withdrawn two of my own comments in the WO discussion. It is indeed time to take this conversation offline.

(End of exchange.  For a critique of Witt's argument that the presider at the Eucharist stands "in persona ecclesiae",  see the Continuum article and combox discussion here.  See also my blog entry "PhD Anglicanism" and the Anglican Disease).

From A.W. Tozer

       

Second Thoughts

A couple of years ago I posted something here regarding my vote of no confidence in the Anglican Continuum with respect to the future of orthodox Anglicanism.  I think it's time to revise that, especially after what happened at the recent International Congress of Catholic Anglicans, and also in light of much of Realignment Anglicanism's inablilty to come to an orthodox understanding of the role of man and woman in the home, society and church viewed in the light of orthodox triadology, christology, and the apostolic and catholic understanding of the created order. 

Joel Wilhem believes that when ACNA makes its decision about women's ordination, possibly this January, it won't be a wise one.  If and when that happens, that will very possibly cause a split in ACNA, and if so, there may be some interesting talks between its traditionalist faction and the Continuum, which had a significant present at the recent Congress.

I for one will not participate in any way, shape or form in the future with any Realignment province or diocese that countenances the ordination of women to the priesthood.  There are not "dual integrities" with respect to this issue.  There is only one integrity, one "tradition" (παράδοσιν) that has been passed down to us by the Church.  Anglicans were never at liberty to change it.

"PhD Anglicanism" and the Anglican Disease

As some readers may have noticed,  on Friday evening I took down an article I posted entitled “Anatomy of an Unfriending” regarding a spat I had with Trinity School for Ministry theology professor William Witt over a comment I made on his Facebook page, to wit, that women's ordination to the priesthood is an "uncatholic monstrosity".  I came to the conclusion that my comment, which concerned the role that Anglican “academic theologians” (Witt’s term) played in foisting women’s ordination on Anglican churches and how this only further complicated the problem of Anglican identity, was over the top rhetorically.  I privately apologized to Dr. Witt for the tone of my remark and took down my blog post.  After explaining to me privately and at his Facebook page his distaste for online theological debate, he subsequently re-friended me.  

As I explained to Dr. Witt, however, while I felt I must apologize for the sarcastic tone of my remark, I cannot and never will apologize for its content.   Implicit in that qualification is my belief that Witt and other “conservative” Anglican theologians who defend women’s ordination are guilty not only of muddying further the question of Anglican identity but of departing from Catholic faith and practice.  Anglicans claim to be Catholics, “Reformed” Catholics, yes, but Catholic enough to desire communion with or at least acknowledgment from Rome and Orthodoxy as a “branch” of the Catholic Church, analogous in certain respects to the Old Catholics, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the various provinces of Eastern Orthodox miscellany. 

Well, let me revise that a bit.  That has been the stated desire of many classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics for a long time.  There is another version of Anglicanism, however, that has been throwing caution – along with Catholic faith and practice - to the wind for quite some time.  I’m speaking, of course, of the liberal Protestant party in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, which was first hatched in the backwaters of infidelity that came to be associated with “Oxbridge” learning and later in other Western academies.  In the early 20^th century, Orthodox-Anglican relations were so good that a number of major Orthodox jurisdictions had affirmed the validity of Anglican orders and certain of them gave economic sanction to Orthodox believers receiving Holy Communion from Anglican priests if an Orthodox priest was not available.  That dialogue imploded when the Church of England, the Protestant Episcopal Church USA, and other provinces in the Anglican Communion began ordaining women.  This in spite of ample warning from Orthodox notables such as Fr. Alexander Schmemann.  

When the churches of the Anglican Realignment, many of which were rightly termed “neo-Anglican” because of the several ways in which they departed from classical Anglicanism, began forming at the turn of the millennium, a number of Evangelical Anglican theologians and clergymen (and women) brought the deal-killing theology and practice of women’s ordination with them into the Realignment, though the theology was tweaked in an attempt to baptize it as a “conservative ” construct.  These folks relied in no small part on the exegetical and theological work of Evangelicals such as Gilbert Bilizekian, Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen, Millard Erickson, and Doug and Rebecca Groothuis.  A number of them are affiliated with  Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization dedicated to egalitarian hermeneutics (and thus women’s ordination). 

Dr. Witt is a prominent defender of women’s ordination to the priesthood in the Anglican Realignment.    Judging by a comment he made in the aforementioned Facebook discussion, he also gives "PhD Anglicanism" very high marks:

Perhaps this just reflects the difference between PhD Anglicanism and the home-grown variety. . . . I sometimes get the feeling that people I encounter on Facebook are still fighting battles that have long been forgotten about in academic theology.

It was that drippingly condescending remark that prompted my sarcastic comment about “academic theology” and it’s relationship to the “uncatholic monstrosity” of women’s ordination, but let’s overlook its condescending tone and focus rather on its substance.  What Dr. Witt is saying here, in essence, is that what ultimately matters for the church is what takes place in the rarified realm of the theological academy, that is to say, in the crania of the brahmins of “PhD Anglicanism.”  That, my friends, has historically been, as it is now in our time,  the heart of what I will call the “Anglican Disease”.

The Anglican Disease, as I mentioned previously, was incubated in the great centers of learning associated with the Church of England.  The Disease later spread to other Anglican centers of higher learning in the West.  It began in the 17^th and 18^th centuries when Anglican academic theologians began flirting with Enlightenment philosophies, theological and political, and later with the theories of higher criticism and other destructive theories associated with the rise of liberal Protestantism, and then finally with the kind of theological radicalism we see throughout the Anglican Communion in the Northern hemisphere and Oceania today. (For an excellent presentation on how Anglican Latitudinarianism morphed very naturally into Anglican radicalism, see Aidan Nichols’ The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism.  I give a brief review here.)

The Anglican Disease’s main symptom is seen in the proposition that the Anglican academe knows better than the historic and contemporary college of Catholic bishops about what’s good for the Church.  That is a complete reversal of the ecclesiology of the past, to which classical Anglicanism is supposed to hold, which is that it is the consensus of a group of Catholic bishops known as the “Church Fathers” and certain councils of bishops, primarily those deemed “Ecumenical”, that determine what is good for the Church, not the late untethered-from-orthodoxy invention known as the “theological academy".  That the Anglican Disease has taken a heavy toll on the Anglican Communion is evident.  Many Anglicans have concluded that it is better to leave the diseased body and start afresh with new, undiseased bodies that are dedicated once again to the apostolic and Catholic faith expressed in the Creed, the teachings of the Church Fathers.

Alas, we still find evidence of the Anglican Disease even in some of these new bodies: “Perhaps this just reflects the difference between PhD Anglicanism and the home-grown variety. . . .  I sometimes get the feeling that people I encounter on Facebook are still fighting battles that have long been forgotten about in academic theology.”  Being a “conservative” is no guarantee that one is immune to the Disease.  It is entirely possible for "conservatives" to depart from the Faith.  This is one reason I’m so thrilled about the existence The Center for Pastor Theologians.   Their idea is to return the task of theologizing to pastors, an idea that is consonant with the way the Catholic Church did theology up until modern times.  Not to say that the there is no role whatsoever for the academic theologian, or that obscurantism should be the order of the day, but rather that the goal of theology for orthodox believers is to foster the well-being of the Church, not the reputations and careers of academic theologians, whose “learned” views are all too often out of accord with the faith and practice of the Catholic Church.  Exhibit A: the “conservative” exegetical and theological case for women’s ordination to the priesthood.

I can think of no better example than the support of William Witt and other Anglican academic theologians for this uncatholic monstrosity.  Dr. Witt recently preached a sermon at a service where two of his students, a married couple, were both ordained to the diaconate.  The couple "will be ordained as priests"  in the near future.  In the course of his  sermon Witt remarked, "I do not have time to give an entire lecture on the theology of ordination. . . ."

Indeed, because for Anglican "latcon" proponents of women's ordination to the priesthood the development of that particular "theology of ordination" has proved to be yeomen's work, as I explained to a defender of Witt's pro-WO stance here:

His (Witt's) is a tall order. Nary a word in the Bible in support of WO, and 2,000 years of tradition and the changeless stances of Rome and Orthodoxy to overcome, but by golly let's change Catholic order by employing an argument that just so happens to have originated in the Anglican church about the time feminism began making inroads. He certainly deserves an "A" for effort.

Sorry, Dr. Witt, but an "uncatholic monstrosity" is what it is at the end of the day.  It is the practice of women’s ordination in the Anglican Communion, and now in the Anglican Realignment, that has in essence shut down ecumenical relations with the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches of the East.  These, our Catholic brothers and sisters with whom we say we desire communion, believe as I do that women’s ordination is in fact a monstrous departure from Catholic faith and order.  So do most classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics in ACNA, AMiA, and the Continuing Churches, and that’s why at the recent International Catholic Congress of Anglicans in Fort Worth a strong message was delivered in certain statements to all the “academic theologians” and non-theologians in ACNA who support women’s ordination.  If these statements are any indication, Witt and those desirous of maintaining Realignment Anglican unity can't be too happy, because the statements not only reflect EXACTLY what I've been saying to him and other defenders of WO in ACNA for some time now about how the practice of women’s ordination is viewed by many orthodox Anglicans, but the logic of those statements could also imply a separation down the road.  Say, when the ACNA Task Force on Holy Orders issues its final report, perhaps as soon as this January.  You would think that Dr. Witt, whose sentiments expressed in this Facebook discussion express the hope for keeping us all together, wouldn't be so dead set on alienating classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics.  But maybe it’s that in the final analysis neither Dr. Witt nor all the other supporters of “biblical equality” in ACNA care about Catholic order.  (See also An Exchange Between William Witt and Me on Women's Ordination.)

Excellent Article from Canon Arthur Middleton

 FT. WORTH: The Congress and Restoring the Anglican Mind.

As Middleton explains, this article was read to the Catholic Congress of Anglicans, which is now in session, in lieu of him being there personally to deliver it.  Defenders of women's ordination in the Realignment are not going to like it.  Excerpts:

The Church of England's General Synod celebrations after the vote for women bishops indicated that the members had not realised how the vote signalled the death of the Church of England, becoming what Richard Hooker would describe as a sect of politically correct ideology. Fundamental in this Anglican Communion Crisis is the emergence of two incompatible and competing religions within the Church, that are not mere differences of "emphasis" but profound differences about the content of Christian belief and the character of Christian life. They express themselves in the authority of experience, over against the authority of Divine revelation that is the basis of Christian orthodoxy.

For the orthodox Christian "Truth" (with a capital "T") has been definitively revealed in Holy Scripture, and authoritatively interpreted in the Christian Tradition. The Christian's response is in terms of belief, understanding, and obedience. "Relevance" then becomes a matter of seeking to apply established doctrinal and moral standards to the situation in which he finds himself. He sees his church as divinely commissioned in faith and order to maintain the faith "once for all delivered to the saints", with the responsibility of maintaining those standards essentially unchanged from one age to another. The issue of women in the Apostolic Ministry is fundamentally a matter of order and not of human rights, which is not surprising, when we speak about the Apostolic Ministry as Holy Orders. As the Preface to our Anglican Ordinal puts it:

It is evident unto all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. {Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1959), p. 637.

Their divine source and authority is God to whom they belong and not men which explains why these ancient Orders are called holy, because they were given by God and because they were not devised by humans. Our Prayer-book Collect for Ember days which is a prayer for Ordinands acknowledges this in praying to God, who of His "divine providence hast appointed divers Orders" in His Church.' . . .

The process that has promoted women in the apostolic ministry is a management exercise determined by politically correct ideology and not theological principle and it reduces Holy Order to a functionalism, alters God's plan for Holy Order and ignores our paramount duty to the universal Church. In England the appointment of a Reconciler is part of the management method which according to the ACAS style of settling Trade Union disputes, is to reconcile differing views. But this issue is not about human relations. It is about deeply held theological convictions that are diametrically opposed to the politically correct ideology. There can be no reconciliation.

The vote signifies that the Church of England and where this has happened in elsewhere in other provinces of the Anglican Communion, Anglicanism is not being true to her Anglican mind. She has rejected the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, the historic episcopate, and in other matters of fundamental doctrine and morals this can happen again. She has ignored her own Formularies expressed in Canon A5 of the English Church, the BCP and the Ordinal where Apostolic Order is therein enshrined. She has ignored her membership of the universal Church and has been in a process of creeping schism from it for years. The ecumenical achievements of the past century, including ARCIC, have been destroyed for there has been a total disregard for Christian unity and an unwillingness to take seriously the warnings of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. So what is the point of the Archbishop of Canterbury's words to his ecumenical partners stressing the fact that we need each other and the importance of unity, after an action that has placed an insuperable obstacle in the way of full Communion. Actions speak louder than words.

Professor Owen Chadwick wrote of Anglican divines in the seventeenth century (Preface, From Unifomity to Unity 1662-1962, edit, Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick [SPCK, London 1962], pp. 13ff), '... if High Churchmen of that age like Bramhall or Thorndike had been asked what led them not to compromise, they would have replied in terms like the following:

Our paramount duty is to the Catholic Church; our sub¬ordinate and derivative duty is to the Church of England as the representative of the Catholic Church in this country. The Catholic Church is known by its faithfulness to the primi¬tive model. The Church of England has no choice but to follow that model, must seek to apply the principle rigorously and exactly.

"I am satisfied", wrote Thorndike in 1660," that the differences, upon which we are divided, cannot be justly settled upon any terms, which any part of the Whole Church shall have just cause to refuse, as inconsistent with the unity of the Whole Church ("The Due Way of composing Differences on Foot," Works, vol. v. p. 29)

Chadwick went on to say that any act which divides the Church of England from the universal Church of the centuries is to be eschewed, even if that act offers temporary or local advantage; and the test of universality, in this sad, divided state of Christendom, may be found in appeal to the ancient and undivided Church of the first centuries. . . .

It has always been the Anglican claim that in faith and order the Anglican Communion is continuous in identity with the Primitive Church. It is no new Church. Today's contest is between modern liberal ecclesiology and the Anglican mind in a time when the majority of people in the Church and the nation have been brainwashed by the secular mind, which they use to displace the claims of the Anglican mind. It is the presuppositions of this secular mind and its politically correct ideology that is determining the Faith and Order of the Anglican Communion that must be displaced. This is not a matter of politics but a matter of faith and theology. Like the divines of the seventeenth century the way forward is by pursuing the Anglican way back to prescriptive sources by upholding Canon A5 which states that the doctrine of the Anglicanism is grounded in the Holy Scripture and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

Anglicanism and the Benedict Option

An excellent article by Fr. Lee Nelson writing at the Anglican Pastor.

What is needed is a charter for extra-parochial communities of prayer, life-giving fellowship, and solidarity in the midst of marginalization, a charter for a new rule of life – not for the individual, but for whole multi-generational groupings of Benedictine Option Christians. We need communities oriented towards the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, communities in which virtue can flourish. Let me put all my cards on the table. I believe that Anglicanism offers just such a charter. We have forms for daily prayer and common intercession, forms for confession, and litanies for ourselves and for the world. We have an emphasis upon the domestic church and family catechesis. We have in our DNA a way for families to join together in their neighborhoods for evening prayer and cookouts, for students to come together for morning prayer and intercession for one another, for baptismal promises to become enfleshed in sacrifice for the sake of our brothers and sisters. In one of the great ironies of Anglicanism, what was intended for the chapel works best in the home! What was intended for the parish church comes to life outside her four walls! Thanks be to God, for we have a goodly heritage.

Is Anglicanism Catholic or Reformed?

The answer is yes, but with needed qualifications.  My readers know how much time and space I've devoted to the proposition that Anglicanism is a Protestant church.  I have given hints, however, that, following much of Anglican divinity, it is exceedingly important to claim our Catholic nature as well.  My readers know how fond I am of this quote from blogger Death Bredon:

The genius of the Protestant Reformation is the recognition that, during the Middle Ages, "ecclesial creep" in both the Western and Eastern portions of the Church had for all practical intents and purposes replaced Old-Law works righteousness with a new works righteousness based on the respective "New Law" of the West (the Penance-Merits-Purgation-Indulgences doctrinal phalanx) and of the East (the imposition of the Monastic Typicon upon the laity).

Furthermore, . . . the formularies of classical Anglicanism did a better job of retaining the wheat of the orthodox catholicism of the ancient Church while jettisoning the chaff of innovative medieval accretion than did any other segment of the Reformation. This is why Anglicanism can, perhaps uniquely, lay equal claim to the appellations Protestant and Catholic and affirm both without any sense of inconsistency or incoherence. Indeed, strictly speaking, in proper understanding of each term, to truly be one, you must be both.

"To truly be one, you must be both."  Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.  I agree, rather, with Death Bredon: To be a true Protestant is to be deep in (Catholic) history and to believe all the Catholic doctrines and practices that are not in opposition to Scripture.   In fact, to the extent that Protestantism becomes uncatholic, it becomes inherently unstable, as Protestant amply demonstrates, and as the current defection of leftist Evangelicals amply demonstrates. 

This article by Peter Leithart entitled The End of Protestantism pretty much reflects my thinking on this matter, and is indicative of the kind of things I will be writing in the future on this matter.  Toward that end, I have deleted from my sidebar all the links critical of Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though the OJC articles lnked there still exist.  (You'll have to search for them if you want to read them.) 

CANA Affirms Classical Anglicanism

Story here.  And I know of at least one Anglo-Catholic priest who voted for it.  A positive sign, I hope.

Martin Thornton’s Syllabus on the Anglican Spiritual Tradition

H/T Matthew Dallman at the Catholic Anglican.

Martin Thornton’s Syllabus

[from the appendix to English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition, rev. ed. 1986.]

A Course of Study in Ascetical Theology for Parish Priests and Theological Students of the Anglican Communion

After delivering lectures on this and kindred subjects, I am invariably asked for a “reading list” by those of my audience whose interest has been stirred, or more likely, by those whose politeness and charity wish to give that impression. It is an immensely difficult request: we are not dealing with a “subject” with its own clearly defined literature, but with an approach to theology springing from, and leading back to, prayer. Neither are we dealing with scholars for whom theological study is their main job, but with busy parish priests and students whose burdensome curriculum does not include ascetics as such. This practical point is frequently forgotten by the compilers of such reading lists or courses of study; nothing is more frustrating to serious students and parish priests than to be given prescribed reading at the rate of twenty tomes a month, or to be exhorted to such scholarly ideals of sticking to original sources and eschewing simple commentaries. Since those giving this advice frequently spend their lives writing commentaries, one is forced to wonder what is the point of them all.

The following scheme is an attempt to avoid such impractical ideals. It is, I think, the sort of scheme that a serious reader of this present book—itself no more than an introduction—might naturally compose for himself. Spread over two years, in eight quarterly periods, the scheme suggests ten books to be seriously studied, which is possible to a parish priest giving only five hours a week to it. These books are listed in the first column. Column 2 lists twenty more books which might be “read through” rather than pored over; almost bedside books; or which may be referred to casually at odd free moments. The third column contains a selection of “devotional” books for use in private prayer, which fit in with the reading and which should give a fair picture of English spirituality in action.

My scheme is obviously suggestive: details may vary with personal choice, and it is not meant to be adhered to rigidly. The daily Office is of course assumed, as is meditative use of the Bible throughout. Anyone who finds difficulty with the Office might well bring in some of the Caroline devotional teaching much earlier than the last six months of the two-year period. I have omitted the fundamental “background” books like Harton, Pourrat, and Scaramelli: these might be regarded as general works of reference. I have also kep rather too strictly to the English School: we have seen how St Ignatius Loyola and the Carmelites can be usefully incorporated, while slight acquaintance with, say, the Rhineland Dominicans brings English spirituality into relief by contrast.

I have tried to keep only to books currently in print, and have included devotional books most of which are now available cheaply in paperback form. A few visits to a good theological library, however, would reveal extra riches, particularly in the form of seventeenth-century manuals of private devotion.

If five hours a week of serious study (column 1) are backed up by a similar period of mental prayer or spiritual reading, I think we might have a creative scheme not unduly arduous to the type of reader in mind. Remembering the central speculative-affective synthesis, the main columns also tend to become interchangeable: Anselm and Julian can obviously either be studied or prayed. With a little fluidity and ingenuity it will be found that the four yearly quarters more or less fit with the liturgical season (Advent-Septuagesima, Septuagesima-Easter, Easter-Trinity 10, Trinity 10-Advent). I do not think a parish priest following such a scheme need spend much time on sermon preparation or devotional addresses: nor do I think these would be sub-standard!

My own scheme here appended is neither perfect nor invariable, but as a pattern I hope it may be practical and of use.

The British State's Silent War on Religion

It is increasingly clear that the UK government’s failing attempt to promote British values has inadvertently turned into a sanctimonious and intolerant campaign against traditionalist religious institutions. Since most of the targets of the British-values campaign are culturally isolated – Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hasidic Jews, fundamentalist Christians, radical Islamists – many otherwise sensitive observers have not picked up on what is a silent war against religion.

This unrestrained and insidious turn taken by the disoriented British-values campaign was exposed last month when it emerged that young Muslim children in one primary school were given a test to assess their predilection for radicalisation. The stated purpose of this intrusive Big Brother-style initiative was to ‘identify the initial seeds of radicalisation’. Judging by the questions posed, it appears that the marker for the precrime of radicalisation was the strength of infants’ feelings about the way of life of their families. To discover how pupils felt about their beliefs, the test asked them to indicate whether they agreed, disagreed or were unsure about the following statement: ‘I believe my religion is the only correct one.’ Any child agreeing with this statement was deemed to be in danger of becoming radicalised into anti-British values.

The sentiments underpinning this infant-radicalisation test also inform the work of Ofsted school inspectors, assorted government programmes and the outlook of the political establishment. From this elite perspective, those who believe that their religion is the truth contradict the unstated official version of British values – namely, that all religions are correct. According to the jargon of the day, an inclusive, non-judgemental and respectful attitude towards other people’s beliefs is mandatory for school children. This demand for non-judgemental respect implicitly negates the freedom of conscience of millions of ardent believers for one simple reason: many religions assume that only they possess the truth. For Christians, Jews and Muslims, the idea that all religions are correct makes little sense. Indeed, if all religions are ‘correct’, then living in accordance solely with one particular faith is absurd. . . .

The right to religious freedom is the cornerstone on which the ideal of tolerance was founded. It is paradoxical that in the 21st century, when the right to be different is so widely celebrated, that the right to act on your religious beliefs is so readily pathologised.

Read the entire article here.

There is only one thing for these religious communities to do, and that is to tell the Enforcers of PC orthodoxy to go pound sand, followed by a campaign of unified, stubborn resistance. Worked for the Jews in the Roman Empire.  Here's Jim Kalb on the question, "How bad will things get?":

Right-wingers are alarmed by totalitarian features of advanced liberalism: its insistent universalism, its theoretical coherence and simplicity, its resolute suppression of alternative principles of social order, its principled rejection of common sense, inherited ways, and the very concept of human nature. In the long run, they ask, how much difference can there be between “inclusiveness”—putting all persons and all human goals and actions into a single relation to a single universal and comprehensive order of things—and “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”? If anything, the former aspiration seems more unlimited and therefore more frightening.

From the liberal standpoint, of course, all this is a joke. The liberal state is different from every other state. It’s a system of power that isn’t a system of power. It has a ruling class of experts, functionaries and lawyers that is reliably disinterested and moral. By controlling everything it sets everything free. That’s why it’s not fanaticism but moderation to say that only liberal states are legitimate. Worrying about “totalitarian liberalism” is like worrying about “oppression by neutrality” or “enslavement by freedom.” It might be an interesting paradox, but as a practical matter it just shows there’s something wrong with you. Above all, liberals are good people and don’t do bad things except to the extent they fall short of liberalism.

Still, what are the practicalities? It may be right—I think it is—to shrug off the liberal self-image as hopelessly self-deluded, but there are some things to say in its favor. In principle, liberalism may be far more ambitious than Mussolini’s fascism, and its ultimate goals may be far more inhuman, but it habitually proceeds by much softer means. Rather than crush an opposing force directly it weakens it by a thousand influences that make it unable to function and assert itself. Criminal prosecutions, when they come, are just a way of formalizing and putting beyond dispute a principle that’s already all but universally accepted. The Swedish government didn’t decide to toss Ake Green in the slammer for a sermon denouncing homosexuality until the Swedes had abandoned religion, made the provident state the basis of everything, and decided that since family relationships no longer served a serious function the sole public standard for sexual connections would be universal equal acceptance. When they came for Pastor Green, no one defended him and they could do what they wanted without being forced outside their comfort zone.

In the end, the liberal state is not principled, and nothing built into liberalism limits how far it can go. Nonetheless, it’s enduringly squeamish. It will use the final measure of force only against weak opponents whom everyone that matters has agreed to hold in contempt. Groups and institutions that stand firm, present their views forcefully and confidently, and keep on going in the face of abuse—who preach the word in all settings, in season and out of season—will prevail. That’s something Catholics, among others, need to remember. How bad things get—and they could get very, very bad—is up to us.

Though liberty in the United States, is, in theory at least, protected by state and federal bills of rights, it is clear that American liberal statists are angling to rule its religious minorities via end runs around constitutional provisions, following the example of liberal states in Europe.  We need to muster the intestinal fortitude to tell them "no", we will not be ruled by them, and be willing to do anything necessary to protect our liberty when they refuse to take "no" for an answer.

The Unbreakable Unity of Word and Sacrament

From a convert to Anglicanism from the Baptist church.  Out there in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican worlds, the unity has been broken.  Those places must recover that unity if they want to be genuinely catholic and apostolic.  It's all about the Gospel, which is why the severing of word and sacrament is not an option. 

I am an Anglican myself now, and my views of preaching have shifted from what they once were. Truthfully, I can’t imagine going back to forty-five-minute oral commentaries on a biblical passage. I also don’t think recordings are really “sermons,” strictly speaking; if preaching is in some way sacramental, surely it requires the bodily presence of preacher and hearers to each other? And I have enough Lutheran in me now to think that it’s perfectly possible to preach a faithful, verse-by-verse exposition of a biblical passage and still miss the Gospel. If the point of preaching is to publicly exhibit Jesus Christ as crucified, per St. Paul’s lapidary summary in the epistle to the Galatians, then no sermon, however “biblical” it might be, is complete without that. If it doesn’t lead inexorably to the Lord’s Table, at which the word of forgiveness becomes tangible and edible, then it isn’t really gospel preaching.

Admittedly, though, I worry as much or more these days about the disillusionment with preaching I find among many Anglicans my age. Many of us were raised in low-church evangelical traditions with strong pulpit ministries, and part of what has drawn us to the Anglican fold is the weekly Eucharist, which was marginal in our upbringings. (My childhood Southern Baptist church took Communion quarterly, with disposable cups of Welch’s and cufflink-shaped saltines.) At the evangelical Wheaton College, where half my friends, it seemed, discovered Anglicanism during their undergraduate years, I frequently heard sighs of relief: “I’m happy to go to a church where the altar, not the pulpit, is at the center.” If they had read Ishmael’s homiletic paean in Moby Dick, “Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out . . . and the pulpit is its prow,” my fellow students would have substituted altar for pulpit without batting an eye.

I worry about this tendency not just because I am nostalgic for serious, rich, demanding sermons. Rather, I worry about it because I persist in believing that preaching—the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ from an appointed text or passages of Scripture—is inseparable from the deep sacramental life I’ve found in the Anglican church. “When the sacrament is severed from proclamation and so from scripture,” as George Hunsinger wrote in a recent essay, “it threatens to become an object of priestly manipulation and superstition.” But when the sacrament fulfills and interprets the preached Word, then preaching comes into its own. “The word,” Hunsinger continues, “proclaims Christ in his saving significance as the Incarnate Saviour” and is thus brought to completion when its hearers commune with that same Christ by receiving his body and blood.

I hope that my church will rediscover and do its part to guard and advance what the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann has called the “unbreakable unity of word and sacrament.” I pray we continue to be a Eucharistic community, feeding on Christ each week in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, as the liturgy has it. And may we also celebrate the rootedness of that feeding in the preached word. May we, as Schmemann puts it, celebrate preaching as what gives the sacrament its “evangelical content,” what prevents it from becoming a free-floating magical exercise shorn of its proclamatory character. May we, still and again, defend and love the pulpit.

The Pulpit is the Prow.

Assorted Recent Comments from the ELCA's Metropolitan New York Synod Facebook Page

With reference to this photo.

“This year's Synod Assembly was very active, with resolutions adopted to divest from fossil fuels, commit to addressing racism in church and society, adopt a Disaster Plan, hold a ministerium, support the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and more. Download the full Summary of Actions here.”

“Did you folks address things like rightly preaching the Gospel or properly administering the sacraments?”

“Why in God’s name is there a man in his underwear?”

“Beckie, just pretend you don't see anything. If you call too much attention to him, he might not be wearing the undies next time. Come Quickly Lord Jesus.”

“The Scandinavian Lutheran Hans Christian Anderson wrote the famous story about an honest little boy who was willing to point out the emperor's nakedness, while the adults pretended that the absurd was normal, prodded on by pride and fear borne of peer pressure. I bet if children were at this assembly, one of them would have certainly asked why that man wasn't wearing any pants.”

"’Tighty-Whities’??? Really????? Just out of curiosity, what *exactly* kind of answer am I supposed to give when asked about this???”

“I invite anyone offended by the idea of a man jumping around in his underwear during ‘worship’ which is apparently affirmed by this church group, to look up the closest LCMS church this weekend...we still believe that worship should be reverent."

Here is one such LCMS church.  This is what church is really all about right here, folks.  LCMS still understands, and parishes like this one really understand:

Fruit of the Loom Advert?

Photo of liturgical dancer at the opening of the recent Metropolitan New York Synod Assembly (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

Comment at the Synod's Facebook page from Lutheran Satire: "The main difference between the ELCA and the LCMS is that, in the ELCA, this is called worship, and in the LCMS, this is called an anxiety dream."