Musings of an Anglican/Episcopal Priest

Month: March 2006 (Page 3 of 4)

The Cloud of Unknowing

The centering prayer movement is one that has continued to gain popularity among many of my seminarian classmates. At the same time, there are many people who are uncomfortable with the practice because of its resemblance to trancendental meditation (some of the most vocal opponents of centering prayer are those who have come out of the transcendental meditation movement in the past). While I understand their concerns with centering prayer, and share many of them, I am also concerned that in their zeal to avoid syncretism and evil influences they may throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a contemplative tradition in Christianity, and many forms of Christian prayer–Hesychasm for instance, such as the Jesus Prayer–were inspirational to other religious traditions (there is no doubt that Byzantine monasticism had an impact on the Sufi brotherhoods for instance.) I do not think we can afford to reject aspects of our tradtion because others have adapted it for themselves and it has taken on the conotations of those traditions. Indeed, I believe we should emphasize truly Christian practices and traditions so that people in my generation realize that Christianity isn’t one dimensional or 10 miles wide and an half inch deep. To that end, I am posting my reflections from my first year of seminary on the anonymous spiritual classic from 14th century England The Cloud of Unknowing. Soon, I will post my own concerns about centering prayer and highlight what I think are the significant differences between traditional Christian forms of contemplation and the current fads.


      The Cloud of Unknowing was written in the 14th century by an anonymous monastic and the character of the work is definitely marked by the monastic ideal. The highest ideal of the Cloud is the contemplation of and eventual union with God. Two things were most striking about the text, the first being the constant theme of lifting oneself to God and the next being the practice of ridding oneself of extraneous thoughts during the contemplation of God.

      While conjecture and theories as to the identity of the author of The Cloud abound, it is the safest course to continue to refer to the author as anonymous. It seems that the strongest possibility is that the author was a Carthusian, though some believe him to have been a Cistercian. While the exact identity or order of the author is a mystery, the monastic context is apparent from the beginning when he writes the following admonition to the reader:

You are not to read it [the Cloud] yourself or to others, or to copy it; nor are you to allow it so to be read in private or in public or copied willingly and deliberately, insofar as this is possible, except by someone or someone who, as far as you know, has resolved to be a perfect follower of Christ. (p 101)

At this time a “perfect follower of Christ” would have been a monastic. Throughout the work the active and the contemplative life are continually juxtaposed as the author upholds the contemplative as the higher. Organizing the Christian life into four degrees, the ordinary, special, singular and perfect the author also breaks down the two types of Christian life, the active and the contemplative into four groups: “Active life has two degrees, a higher and a lower; and the contemplative life also has two degrees, a lower and a higher.” (p 115-116, p 136)
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From Communiosanctorum: Arminians Have Their Reasons

Paul Owens of Communiosanctorum (which incidently is rapidly becoming one of my new favorite blogs), a convinced Calvinist Anglican has recently posted one of the better defenses of Arminianism that I have seen. Take a look-see:

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a Reformed Anglican, who gladly owns the Augustinian theology of the Reformation. I am not an Arminian. I do not believe that God only intended to make salvation possible for every human being by means of the death of Christ. I do not believe that election to salvation is in any way conditioned on the faithful response of individuals. I do not believe that any person who comes to a true knowledge of the grace of God will fail to be eternally saved. However, I will gladly admit that I am a great admirer of Arminius and Wesley. These men were gifted theologians and ministers, whom all “Calvinists” should revere. Arminian theology deserves our respect; and we should never give the impression that Arminians are incapable of handling our Calvinist prooftexts.

The following are a few examples:

John 6:44: Arminians have no problem with this verse. They agree that no man can come to Christ unless God draws him. It is God’s gracious call which makes it possible for a person to come to Christ. They also agree that God will raise that person up at the last day–if they meet the condition stated in this same verse. If they respond to God’s call by coming to Christ, they will be raised up at the last day. It is not eisegesis to insist that the end of being raised up is contingent upon meeting the condition for being raised up that is stated in this very verse. The question is simply: Does the gracious, drawing call of God make it certain that the person will come to faith, or does that call only make it possible for the person to come to faith? The verse can accomodate either view. Arminians can cite verse 45 and simply say that those who still refuse to “learn” from the Father will not come to Christ.

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[Listening to: Shelter – Ray LaMontagne – Trouble (4:36)]

Flashback from Whitehall: Jaques Derrida and the Gift of the Cross

I was galavanting (is that how you spell it?) around the archives of various blogs I visit when i came across this great sermon from Fr. WB at Whitehall. Check out this little gem–but you really should read the whole thing:

[…]

As many of you know, Jacques Derrida was a French intellectual famous for inventing or discovering Deconstruction, a technique by which literally everything is called into question and turned on its head. During the evening of Friday, October the 8th 2004, in a move of uncharacteristic certitude and clarity, Derrida died. A friend of mine broke the news to me in an email the following day, concluding “I suppose if he died in Christ, even his death can be called into question.”



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You gotta love it…

For those of you who read this blog who are still in the Asheville area or are going through the place, you NEED to check this place out… it’ll be good for your soul.

12bones

Check out their web site

Salutations

Thank you for the invitation to participate! I look forward to contibuting to the discussion.  Let’s start a new Tractarian movement;  we all know the Church could use it!

Orthodox of the world, unite!

GOE Set 5: Holy Scripture

Day of JudgmentDay of Judgment by McKendree Robins Long

I have to say that I was quite surprised by the choice of topic for the Holy Scripture portion of the General Ordination Exams, God’s wrath is not something that we typically hear discussed in Episcopal Churches, and when it comes up the notion is usually roundly condemned by many in our comfortable denomination. Because of this, I was more apprehensive about my answer on this section of the exam than I was on others (most of which dealt more with factual information that was either right or wrong, but unlikely to incur the ire of overly liberal readers). I found somewhat contrary motivations at work within me as I considered this question. On the one hand, I wanted to be honest about what I thought about God’s wrath, i.e. that he does judge and punish as well as bestow grace and forgive. On the other hand I didn’t want to paint the issue in such stark terms that it might offend the sensibilities of a reappraising reader. It might be true that “everyone” in the orthodox camp expects the GOE’s to be biased, but I still wanted to do well. Imagine my surprise when the one critique of my answer (I got a 4 of 5) was that I exhibited a tendency to downplay God’s wrath! At any rate, here’s the question and my response.



The Wrath of God

Holy Scripture makes many references to God’s anger. In Romans 12:19, Paul alludes to the wrath of God and cites Deuteronomy 32:35:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengence is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord (NRSV)

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in alluding to the wrath of God, also cites Deuteronomy 32:35 in Hebrews 10:30:

For we know the one who said, “Vengence is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” (NRSV)

In an essay of three pages, devote equal space to each of the following questions:

How does the immediate literary context of Romans 12:19 elucidate the meaning of the wrath of God? How does the broader context, the whole of Romans, indicate Paul’s understanding of the wrath of God?

How does the immediate literary context of Hebrews 10:30 elucidate the meaning of the wrath of God? How does the broader context, the whole of Hebrews, indicate the author’s understanding of the wrath of God?

What place does the wrath of God have in contemporary Christian life? Make use of your analysis of Romans and Hebrews in composing your answer.

(follow the link below to see my answer)

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The New Pantagruel: Paul Seaton Tantae Molis Erat : Griswold Revisited

Father-1Father Forgive Us, by Jim Janknegt

Paul Seaton addresses our evolving understanding of rights and the individual as shaped by the sexual revolution in his recent article from The New Pantagruel, “Tantae Molis Erat”… :

“Tantae molis erat romanam condere gentem imperiumque”

(Of such effort it was to found the Roman people and empire)

–Virgil, Aeneid

[…]

The Court claimed to do so, to be sure, in the name and by the authority of “the Constitution,” as performing its sworn duty by articulating the constitutional concept and imperatives of “liberty.” As Justice Kennedy intoned in Lawrence, quoting himself from Casey: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” It is remarkable, though, how frequently and predictably this view of “liberty” consorts, that is, comports, with the views of self-proclaimed “progressive voices” and “forces” in American politics and culture.

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William G. Witt– George Herbert’s Approach to God: The Faith and Spirituality of a Country Priest

Images-1Dr. William G. Witt has a web page which I recommend highly to you.  Here’s a selection from his article on George Herbert’s spirituality.

The spirituality of George Herbert, the seventeenth-century poet and priest, has been extolled as combining many of the factors that have become especially associated with classical Anglicanism: the pursuit of the via media (which is supposed to be both Catholic and Evangelical); a this-worldly theology that celebrates creation viewed in continuity with redemption; a corresponding focus on the incarnation of Christ as the prime example of the positive value of creation; an approach articulated not so much by speculative theologians as experienced in Word and Sacrament (in the public worship of the Daily Office and the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer).

Such a summary of Herbert’s spirituality is not mistaken, but it encourages us too easily to imagine Herbert as a happy anticipation of the current sacramental and liturgical “experientialism” that passes for spirituality in much of contemporary Anglicanism. This “experientialist” Anglicanism is able to sanction Herbert’s poetry as a forerunner of a primacy of religious “experience” only to the extent that it ignores the actual content of Herbert’s writings. At the same time, there is nothing particularly Anglican about the appeal to the primacy of “experience.” Designated “experiential-expressivism” in George Lindbeck’s contemporary classic, The Nature of Doctrine,(1) variations are pervasive in contemporary Protestant and Catholic spirituality. The primary characteristic of “experiential-expressivism” is the separation of and priority of “religious experience” over linguistic interpretation. “Religious experience” is viewed as pre-thematic, pre-linguistic, and (generally speaking) culturally universal. Religious symbols, practices, narratives, and doctrines are viewed as consequent attempts to express this prior experience linguistically. Hermeneutically, the goal of the contemporary is to peel away the layers of interpretive enculturation to retrieve and reappropriate the original experience.

Despite its pervasive influence, I find the experientialist model unhelpful because it provides a misleading and inaccurate account of the relationship between theology and spirituality; it is inconsistent with the self-understanding and actual practices of what most Christians historically have thought they were doing when they were praying and worshiping; it imposes a paradigm on Christian spirituality that does not fit well with the actual historical texts and studies of Christian spiritual writers.

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News from France

This is just sick. Is this what the Islamization of Europe will look like?

Torture and Death of Jew Deepen Fears in France

Two strips of red-and-white police tape bar the entrance to the low-ceilinged pump room where a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, spent the last weeks of his life, tormented and tortured by his captors and eventually splashed with acid in an attempt to erase any traces of their DNA.

The floor of the concrete room, in the cellar of 4, rue Serge-Prokofiev, is bare except for a few packets of rat poison, a slowly drying wet mark and a dozen small circles drawn and numbered in white chalk, presumably marking the spots where the police retrieved evidence of Mr. Halimi’s ordeal.

Mr. Halimi, 23, died Feb. 13, shortly after he was found near a train station 15 miles away by passers-by, after crawling out of the wooded area where he was dumped. He was naked and bleeding from at least four stab wounds to his throat, his hands bound and adhesive tape covering his mouth and eyes. According to the initial autopsy report, burns, apparently from the acid, covered 60 percent of his body.

“I knew they had someone down there,” said a young French-Arab man, loitering in the doorway of a building adjacent to the one where Mr. Halimi was held. He claimed to live upstairs from the makeshift dungeon but would not give his name or say whether he knew then that the man was a Jew. “I didn’t know they were torturing him,” he said. “Otherwise, I would have called the police.”

But it is clear that plenty of people did know, both that Mr. Halimi was being tortured and that he was Jewish. The police, according to lawyers with access to the investigation files, think at least 20 people participated in his abduction and the subsequent, amateurish negotiations for ransom. His captors told his family that if they did not have the money, they should “go and get it from your synagogue,” and later contacted a rabbi, telling him, “We have a Jew.”

The horrifying death has stunned France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim and largest Jewish populations. Last weekend, tens of thousands of people marched against racism and anti-Semitism in Paris, joined by the interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, and smaller marches took place in several other French cities, including Marseille.

Hat tip to Titusonenine

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