Anglicanism is . . . 4. Creedal

“The golden rule is only gilt without a creed to guide it.”
– Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy (1883-1929), I Believe: Sermons on the Apostles Creed
 
“There has been a common, a universal, faith of Christendom, which has, most authoritatively, expressed itself in the Catholic Creeds, the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds. There are, indeed, features in the common faith, such as the belief in Atonement, in sacramental grace, in the inspiration of Scripture, which are only slightly or by implication touched on in these formulas of faith; but at least in what they contain they represent what has been universal Christianity. . .
“[That means that faithful engagement with Christianity will wrestle with the] “whole set of ideas about sin and redemption and the Incarnation and the Trinity which belong to the Catholic Creeds and are the commonplaces of historical Christianity.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Permanent Creed
 
“Modest and well-disposed people take it for granted at starting that the orthodox judgment will turn out to be right; and they set themselves to school to learn why the artists and poets of great name are great, till their own judgment becomes enlightened, and they understand what at first they took on trust. It was the instinctive perception of this function of authority which made the Church insist so much on the principle ‘credo ut intelligam’ [I believe in order to understand]. The Creed represents the catholic judgment, the highest knowledge of God and the spiritual life granted to man by the Divine Revelation. Let a man put himself to school in the Church with reverence and godly fear, and his own judgment will become enlightened.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Holy Spirit and Inspiration in Lux Mundi
 
“The Creed is no mere academic document, no mere list of ‘dogmas.’ It is an account of that which is; and every word it contains has a meaning at once universal, practical, and spiritual within the particular experience of each soul. It irradiates and harmonizes every level of our life, not one alone. All great spiritual literature does this to some extent; but the Creed, the condensed hand-list of those deep truths from which spiritual literature is built up, does it supremely.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity
 
“All I try to do is tell people that the creeds are not arbitrary formulae; that they were intended to mean something, and do still mean something.”
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), in a letter to Karl Barth, 1939)
 
“Prayer and dogma are inseparable. They alone can explain each other. Either without the other is meaningless. and dead."
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Lord I Believe, Suggestions for turning the Creed into Prayer

“Though God be in me, yet without the creed to guide me I should know neither how to call upon God, nor on what God to call. God may be the very sap of my growth and substance of my action; but the tree has grown so crooked and is so deformed and cankered in its parts, that I should be at a loss to distinguish the divine power among the misuses of the power given. Were I to worship God as the principle of my life, I should merely worship myself under another name, with all my good and evil. So I take refuge in that image of God which we have described as branded from outside upon the bark. Here is a token I can trust, for he branded it there himself; he branded it on the stock of man when he stretched out his hands and feet and shed his precious blood. The pattern of the brand was traced on me by those who gave the creed to me; God will deepen it and burn it into me, as I submit my thoughts to him in meditation."
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Lord I Believe, Suggestions for turning the Creed into Prayer
 
“The Nicene Creed matters, because it affirms the Trinitarian shape of the Christian faith into which every baby, child, young person, and adult being brought into the faith is baptised. It is also the most important and obvious example of legitimate development from scripture: a development that brings out what is implicit in scripture, enfolding it in a form of corporate speech that every generation takes up as its own.
 
The Spirit works beyond Pentecost in the tradition of the Church, and it is by imitation and repetition that we are formed in faith. Dogma, as has often been said, following a rabbinical saying, is a ‘fence around a mystery’. To lose the Nicene Creed risks a descent into an endlessly quarrelsome individualism, at the same time as making us vulnerable to control by whatever constitutes the current church hierarchy.”

– Angela Tilby (1950 - ), Let us sing the Creed, Church Times, 05 June 2020
 
“Christian doctrine is not just useful, it is beautiful. If we cannot give thanks for God’s great glory, the glory of the eternal Trinity, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, it will not even be useful for long, because it will not compel and involve us. Moralism with a sentimental gloss of mythology does not, as far as I can see, radicalize our perception of each other very deeply for very long.”
– Rowan Williams, (1950 - ) Living Tradition: Affirming Catholicism in the Anglican Church
 
“Doctrinal statements may stretch and puzzle, and even repel, and yet they still go on claiming attention and suggesting a strange, radically different and imaginatively demanding world that might be inhabited.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), No life, here – no joy, terror or tears Church Times 17 July 1998

Previous:

4. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

Next:

5. Liberally Catholic and Generously Orthodox

Anglicanism is . . . 3. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

Along with the scriptures which we believe to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, Anglican Christianity, trusting that the same Spirit continues to move in the Church, looks to a broader foundation in the tradition of the Church, particularly the first five centuries. 

Tradition is not the dead weight of the past but rather the momentum of past Spirit-led faithfulness giving us direction and propelling us forward.

 
“One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Opuscula Quaedam Posthuma Lanceloti Andrewes, Episcopi Wintoniensi 

[Certain Posthumous Minor Works of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester]

“Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what SCRIPTURE doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of REASON; after this the Church succeedeth that which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“[N]o man can set a better state of the question between Scripture and tradition, than Hooker doth. His words are these: ‘The Scripture is the ground of our belief; the authority of man (that is the name he gives to tradition) is the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture.’ . . . [W]e resolve our faith into Scripture as the ground; and we will never deny that tradition is the key that lets us in.”
– William Laud (1573-1645), A Relation of the Conference between William Laud and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit
 
“[Anglican Christianity] is conspicuously orthodox on the great fundamentals of the Trinity and the Incarnation. [Anglicanism] accepts the ecumenical councils as criteria of heresy.”
– Charles Gore (1852-1932), Roman Catholic Claims

“The authority of the collective society, the ‘rule of faith,’ is meant to nourish and quicken, not to crush, individuality. Each individual Christian owes the profoundest deference to the common tradition. Thus to ‘keep the traditions’ is at all times, and not least in Scripture, a common Christian exhortation. But this common tradition is not meant to be a merely external law. It is meant to pass by the ordinary processes of education into the individual consciousness, and there, because it represents truth, to impart freedom.”

– Charles Gore (1852-1932), The Holy Spirit and Inspiration in Lux Mundi
 
“In truth I believe that the most radical voice in our contemporary world is tradition, the Scripture and Doctrinal tradition of the Church. These are the radical un-making of our world of the everyday.”
– Katherine Sonderegger (1950 - ), from a May 7, 2015 interview with Fortress Press acquisitions editor Michael Gibson upon the publishing of Systematic Theology: Volume 1, The Doctrine of God

Traditional, not traditionalist

We engage the tradition of the church not as a problem to be overcome, but a community across time to which we belong and with which it is possible to dialogue. We might not be bound to a simple repetition of the past in all things. Tradition is not simply static. The Church needs to engage in careful, prayerful, patient discernment to avoid and resist unfaithful deviation. The basic dogma of the Church is set. But there is adaptation and development in some matters of practice. Still, we will seek continuity with the Apostles and the communion of saints who encourage us as we run the race in our time.

“Traditions themselves embody dimensions of conflict and ambiguity, and a quest for tradition should never be confused with a return to past conventions of a straightforward kind. Tradition is rather a quest for rich and fertile soil, for grounding, for a profound basis for discipleship, for something that is more adequate and abiding than the shifting sands of fashion. To be outside all traditions is, as Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, is to be intellectually and morally destitute.”
– Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), The Eye of the Storm, Living Spiritually in the Real World

The real development of theology is rather the process in which the Church, standing firm in her old truths, enters into the apprehension of the new social and intellectual movements of each age: and because 'the truth makes her free' is able to assimilate all new material, to welcome and give its place to all new knowledge, to throw herself into the sanctification of each new social order, bringing forth out of her treasures things new and old, and shewing again and again her power of witnessing under changed conditions to the catholic capacity of her faith and life.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), Lux Mundi, Preface

“The Church has also met the different phases of the world's attack by adaptations in her discipline, in changes in her worship, and by forging new spiritual weapons of her own. . .
 
It has been asked whether St. Vincent's rule applies to Practice as well as Doctrine. It is applicable only to doctrine and to such practices as involve doctrine. St. Vincent says, ‘which ancient consent of the holy Fathers is with great care to be investigated and followed by us, not in all the lesser questions of the Divine Law, but only or at any rate principally in the Rule of Faith’ [i.e., the Creed] . . .
 
We have ventured to add to Vincent's rule one further test: the practical one of Christian Experience. What, we may ask ourselves, does the Christian Experience or Christian Consciousness bear witness to in any matter?
 
It is certainly a very useful test, to some minds more powerful than any other, and it may by God's blessing help to draw all schools of Churchmen closer together. This, we may remark if our Church is to fulfil its noble mission, is the thing pre-eminently to be labored for by us all today.
 
Now there are those whose natural conservative tendency of mind leads them with St. Vincent to make their appeal to Holy Scripture and the Authority of the Church. There are others who naturally turn more to the practical results of Christianity as seen in conduct and character, and rest their belief on the approval of Reason and Conscience and the certification of truth by the Voice within. Then there are our Evangelical brethren who, while loyal to the Prayer Book, make the Word the lantern to their feet, and the indwelling Holy Spirit its interpreter. But I trust we may see that these three modes are not exclusive of one another, but may walk as friends peacefully together, lending to each other a mutual support. May they make a three-fold cord, the less easily broken because the strands somewhat differ.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Catholicity and the Vincentian Rule
[The Vincentian Rule’ was proposed by Vincent of Lerins in the 5th-century to distinguish Catholic truth from heresy, asserting that true doctrine is that which has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all”]
 
“Movement, not stability, is the law of the Christian life, and of God's self-revelation in history. This is a fact important to realize at the outset; for our instinct is often to stay put, and to envisage change with distrust and dread; while the fundamental method of the Church is to keep us steadily . . . in the light of a great expectation. The first thing she does with us is to turn us to face the future.”
– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year
 
“Those who cling to tradition and fear all novelty in God’s relation with his world, deny the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and forget that what is now tradition was once innovation: the real Christian is always a revolutionary, belongs to a new race, has been given a new name and a new song. God is with the future. The supernatural virtue of Hope blesses and supports every experiment made for the glory of His Name and the good of souls: and even when violence and horror seem to overwhelm us, discerns the secret movement of the Spirit inciting to sacrifice . . . In the Church, too, this process of renovation from within, this fresh invasion of Reality must constantly be repeated if she is to prevent the ever-present danger of stagnation. She is not a stagnant institution but the living Body of Christ―the nucleus of the Kingdom, in this world. Thus loyalty to her supernatural calling will mean flexibility to it pressures and demands and also a constant adjustment to that changing world to which she brings the unchanging gifts. But only in so far as her life is based on prayer and self-offering will she distinguish rightly between these implicits of her vocation and the suggestions of impatience or self-will.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Abba
 
“Theology looks to the Christian past not for models for simple imitation but for a way to complicate one’s sense of the possibilities for present Christian expression and action. It looks to the past not to restrict and cramp what might be said in the present but to break out of the narrowness of a contemporary sense of the realistic.”
– Kathryn Tanner (1957 - ), How My Mind Has Changed: Christian Claims, Christian Century, February 23, 2010
 
“We are seeking a tradition that is open to the disturbing challenges from which renewal of life can come. Spiritual life stands always in need of interrogation by the word of God, of self-scrutiny and perpetual *metanoia*. It is a tradition that is never ‘at ease in Zion’ but always restless, always struggling. It is a tradition of pilgrims and sojourners who are never fully at home in this world., never adjusted to the values and norms of any given order, but always seeking to be a community of contradiction and dissent, of scandal and prophetic testimony. It is a rebel tradition, a tradition of sojourners in quest of a better city.”
– Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), The Eye of the Storm, Living Spiritually in the Real World
 
For honesty’s sake, I must acknowledge that even some who I identify as Liberal Catholic Anglicans have been suspicious of the idea of the adaptation of tradition. See, Percy Dearmer here and C. S. Lewis here. Much as I respect each of them, I do not think tradition has been of can be simply static. And, in the view of some, each of those three departed from some aspect of the tradition. A lot depends on what counts as Tradition vs traditions. More on Charles Gores take on faithful development can be found here,

Previous:

2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

Next:

4. Creedal

 

Anglicanism is . . . 2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

Anglicans look to the inspired Scriptures as our primary authority. But we also recognize that God speaks to us in myriad ways. Anglicans honor the human ability to reason. Reason enables us to interpret Scripture, engage Tradition, and understand Creation (the Book of Nature). Reason is understood not merely as abstract logic, but as the comprehensive human capacity to imagine, understand, experience, reflect upon reality, and discern truth ultimately aiming to know God. It is a participatory engagement with the reasonableness of a reality created and intimately sustained by God who is in, with, and under all things.
 
“God being the Author of Nature, her voice is but His instrument. . . . By force of the light of Reason, wherewith God illuminateth everyone which cometh into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood and good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is.’ The function of reason was to discover law, particularly the Natural Law, moral and physical, by which God regulates the universe.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Whatsoever either men on earth or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of wisdom; which wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. As her ways are of sundry kinds, so her manner of teaching is not merely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of Nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we disgrace her in any other; but let all her ways be according unto their place and degree adored..”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Religion is not a bird of prey sent by God to peck out the eyes of [humans].”
– Nathaniel Culverwel (1619-1651), An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature
[This is a paraphrase of a rhetorical question Culverwel asks about those who are suspicious of reason]
 
“And this is the second proposition: If God does reveal himself to us, we cannot acknowledge or master what he reveals without the use of reason. Therefore all his self-manifestation is also our discovery of him, and all revealed theology is rational theology.”
– Austen Farrer (1904-1968), Saving Belief
 
“If people are to believe with any vigour of peace of mind, then heart and head need to be on reasonably friendly terms. At least our scientific picture of the universe and our general habits of thought, the ideas we are prepared to find meaningful, must be such that ’God’ does not become a nonsensical term, totally alien to everything else in our mental furniture.”
– John Baker (1928-2014) in Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, 1981
 
But with a caveat
 
Anglicans, recognizing the effects of sin, self-deception, and creaturely limitations, are cautious about putting too much trust in our ability to reason our way to truth unaided by God. Thus we use our reason with humility.
 
“Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade deep into the doings of Most High, whom although to know be life and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence. He is above and we are on earth, therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“This light hath caught a fall . . . and thereupon it halteth.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Lancelot Andrewes Works, Sermons, Volume Five, Nineteen Sermons Upon Prayer in General, and the Lord’s Prayer in General Preparation to Prayer, Sermon II
 
“Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.”
– John Donne (1572-1631), Batter my heart, three-person’d God
 
“As the human mind is limited in its knowledge, and its premises are not universal, its conclusions are only more or less probable. The function of the reasoning faculties in respect to religious truths is to better enable us to understand what God has revealed and our spiritual nature discerned. It must therefore be kept in its own proper office, to illustrate and not to be made the basis of our faith.
 
We must also mortify it by a certain distrust in it, and not be obstinate in holding our opinions. After the truths of the faith, there is nothing of belief which is a matter of grave importance. We should therefore never argue with earnestness of manner or assertions of certainty about theoretical questions or practical matters.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Commentary on the Rule and the Book of Customs
 
“Reason itself as it exists in us in vitiated. We wrongly estimate the ends of life, and give preference to those which should be subordinate, because they have a stronger appeal to our actual, empirical selves . . . It is the spirit which is evil; it is reason which is perverted; it is aspiration itself which is corrupt.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Nature, Man, and God
 
“Who can possibly know what the right thing is to say, particularly when one speaks of God? Near the end of his life, following a profound religious experience while celebrating Mass, Thomas Aquinas ceased writing. He is reported to have said, when asked why he had ceased his theological labors, ‘All that I have written seems like straw to me compared to what I have seen.’ As Thomas himself had often said, the inadequacy of human language plagues all attempts to talk about God. But sometimes even our straw can be used by God as tinder upon which the spark of the Spirit can fall.”
– Sarah Coakley (1951 - ), Introduction to The Love that is God by Frederick Bauerschmidt

Previous:

1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

Next:

3. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

Anglicanism is . . . 1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

Introduction
 
I am going to do a series of posts with quotes that I believe capture something of the spirit of the Anglican tradition to which the Episcopal Church belongs. Since I have not read everything and everyone, the quotes included are a bit eclectic idiosyncratic. They deliberately will come mainly from authors who represent the “Liberal Catholic” take on Anglicanism with which I identify. There will be a few exceptions to this, but I hope for a catholicity that includes them as well. I also hope for a catholicity that embraces people who disagree on any number of things (as the authors I am quoting would) while agreeing on the broad Catholic faith of the creeds (as the authors I am quoting also do).
 
The men and women I will be quoting are all part of the Anglican tradition. But pretty much everything that follows could be supported by quotes from early and Medieval saints and theologians.
 
This is not exhaustive and none of these by themselves is unique to Anglicanism. But, taken together, they begin to give a picture of what the Anglican tradition of Christianity might be about.
 
Anglicanism is . . .
 
1. Biblically Focused
 
The Anglican Tradition is centered in the Scriptures. But it is more “Prima Scriptura” than “Sola Scriptura.”

“Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable than the knowledge of holy Scripture; forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true word, setting forth his glory and also man’s duty. And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is or may be drawn out of that fountain and well of truth.”
– Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture (Part 1), First Book of Homilies
 
“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. . .” 
– The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article 6 (1571)
 
“Scripture is perfect, without error, and sufficient – for the end towards which it is ordered, namely, for providing ‘a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary, the knowledge wherof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attaine unto.’ And if some err in denying that sufficiency in matters of salvation, others err by ‘racking and stretching it further then by him was ment.’”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“The same body of saving truths which the Apostles first preached orally, they afterwards, under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, wrote in Holy Scripture, God ordering in His Providence that, in the unsystematic teaching of Holy Scripture, all should be embodied which is essential to establish the faith.”
– Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Eirenicon
 
“Holy Scripture, according to the Anglican view, is the treasure-house of God's revealed truth.”
– William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), The Church-Idea
 
“The first [proposition] is this: If we believe in God at all, it is absurd and impious to imagine that we can find him out by our own reason, without his being first active in revealing himself to us. Therefore all our discovery of him is his self-manifestation, and all rational theology is revealed theology.”
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Saving Belief
 
“If there is to be a religion of trust, and not of slavish cowardly fear, that religion must have a Revelation, the revelation of a Name for its basis. A religion which creates its own object cannot be one of trust. I cannot rest upon that which I feel and know that I have made for myself. I cannot trust in that which I look upon as a form of my own mind or a projection from it. . . Neither can I trust in any shadowy, impalpable essence, or in any Soul of the world. If this be the God I worship, my worship will be one of doubt and distrust, whenever it is at all sincere.”
– Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), Sermons on the Prayer-Book’, Sermon X, ‘The Creed
 
“Christians are committed to the belief that the triune God has revealed a passionate desire to have fellowship with them, even in the light of their manifest sin. Scripture is chief among God's providentially ordered gifts directed to bringing about reconciliation and fellowship with God despite human sin. Thus, Scripture is holy because of its divinely willed role in making believers holy.”
– Stephen Fowl (1960 - ), Theological Interpretation of Scripture
 
Biblical, but not Literalistic
 
“Scripture is perfect, without error, and sufficient – for the end towards which it is ordered, namely, for providing ‘a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary, the knowledge wherof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attaine unto.’ And if some err in denying that sufficiency in matters of salvation, others err by ‘racking and stretching it further then by him was ment.’”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 
 
“In respect of the Holy Scriptures: the Anglican Church stands for truth. It places no ban on research into the origin of the various biblical books. It encourages priests and laymen to study God’s Holy Word. Nothing that science can discover concerning the origin of the books or the method of their compilation can affect their corroborative value as to the teaching of the Church. It is by living in the Church, and primarily listening to her teaching, that the written word is best understood. What the Holy Spirit has enlightened the Church to read out of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit put into it, to be so read. Differences of interpretation may exist about different texts, but the mind of the Spirit is to be found in the Church's common and enduring consent.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Journey Godward
 
“The Church has no opposition to the investigation of science in any department of knowledge. Nothing has so far been demonstrated that contradicts the dogmas she has declared essential. We may allow, for instance, the allegorical character of the early chapters of Genesis without denying the sinful tendency found in man's nature by reason of heredity. Man has fallen away from God.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Journey Godward
 
“It is a common fallacy, which has caused much needless difficulty and fruitless discussion, to suppose that the religious value of Genesis depends upon its scientific and historical accuracy. This confusion of thought is due to a mistaken theory of inspiration which maintains that every word of Scripture, every statement contained in the Bible, is divinely inspired and is therefore to be accepted as literal truth. Such a theory is . . . one which can only be maintained either by obstinately ignoring the established facts of science and history or by imposing a forced and artificial, interpretation upon narratives of Genesis to try to reconcile them with scientific facts by extracting from them a meaning which they do not contain.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), A New Commentary on Holy Scripture
 
“If, instead of trying to manipulate the words of Scripture to fit an arbitrary theory to which the Bible itself gives no support, we examine the Scriptures carefully and deduce a theory from the evidence they themselves furnish, we find that their religious value is independent of scientific or historical accuracy. The writers are inspired to reveal the religious truth necessary for man’s eternal salvation.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), A New Commentary on Holy Scripture
 
“Thus something originally merely natural—the kind of myth that is found among most nations—will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself it would not have served. Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature—chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of God’s word. . . The total result is not ‘the Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Reflections on the Psalms
 
“It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible . . . as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), letter to Mrs. Johnson on November 8, 1952 in Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. 3. Mrs Johnson had asked, “Is the Bible Infallible?”
 
“Rather than get hung up on historical details, we need to keep coming back to the question, ‘What does God want to tell us?’ If we hang our faith on the absolute historical accuracy of Scripture in every detail, we risk making Scripture a sort of ‘magic’ book that turns up the right answers to all sorts of rather irrelevant questions, instead of being a book that gives us, in the wonderful words of the Coronation service, ‘the lively oracles of God’. The Bible is not intended to be a mere chronicle of past events, but a living communication from God, telling us now what we need to know for our salvation.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), Being Christian

Next: 

2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

Empathy and its Discontents

Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is a natural, innate characteristic of being human. It is a natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It enables us to live in community where understanding and caring for one another is essential.

The capacity to feel empathy is usually considered a good thing. We all appeal to empathy sometimes when we want to want others to better understand us understand. Politicians, aid organizations, advertisers and others employ empathy in ways that are familiar. We regularly employ appeals to empathy to persuade others or it is used to persuade us.

But over the last year we have seen that there are some who are suspicious of empathy. Elon Musk characterized empathy as a “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” But he is not alone. There are many who have criticized empathy, referring to “toxic empathy,” “untethered empathy,” and “weaponized empathy.”

Others have responded to this criticism of empathy, e.g., Mark Clavier. For responses to the underlying misogyny of the criticism of empathy, see Beth Felker Jones and Dani Treweek. I won’t repeat what they have said. I’ll just make a few observations before addressing what I think is the shadow side of empathy.

It is certainly true that empathy can be used not only to persuade us but to manipulate our emotions. We can probably all relate to that. But it is also true that whether empathy is being used to persuade (good) or manipulate (bad) is in the eye of the beholder. For example, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates appeal to empathy. Depending on your own convictions, you will feel differently about those appeals.

Those who talk of toxic empathy are concerned that just “feeling” for others can lead to a sort of codependence that negates moral boundaries have a point. But I can respond with empathy to a friend sharing about frustrations with their marriage without endorsing their affair. Empathizing with the victims of crime does not need to lead me to supporting the death penalty. But those who are making much of weaponized empathy are quite selective. For example, sharing the stories of immigrants and refugees is toxic. But weaponizing the crimes committed by some undocumented immigrants is not.

It is also the case that people can find themselves unexpectedly feeling empathy for those they are not supposed, e.g., the enemy or others whose feelings or anguish is otherwise inconvenient. And that, it seems to me, is at the root of the “anti-empathy” impulse. Feeling empathy for those considered beyond the pale can compromise group solidarity and lead us to wonder if those my group considers beyond the pale are really so.

And that gets at what I think is the shadow of our natural empathy.

As I said above, empathy is a natural, innate characteristic of being human that we share with other social creatures. But, along with many other species, our natural empathy is naturally parochial. We are more inclined to feel empathy for those who are like us, those we like, and those who are part of our group. Chimpanzees, for example exhibit lots of empathy within their group, but are suspicious and unempathetic toward those outside their group.

Franz de Waal writes of this in The Bonobo and the Atheist,

“[One lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan] is that everyone is our neighbor, even `people unlike us. Given the parochialism of human and animal empathy, this is the more challenging message. Even with a simple measure, such as yawn contagion, identification with strangers is hard to demonstrate. Both chimpanzees and people join the yawns of familiar individuals more readily than those of outsiders. Empathy is hopelessly biased, as was shown, for example, in a study at the University of Zurich, which measured neural responses to the suffering of others. Men watched either a supporter of their own soccer club or a supporter of a rival soccer club getting hurt through electrodes attached to their hands. Needless to say, the Swiss take their soccer seriously. Only their own club members activated empathy. In fact, seeing fans of rival clubs getting shocked activated the brain’s pleasure area. So much for loving thy neighbor.”

In Wisconsin we can imagine how this experiment would play out had it been Packers fans and Bears fans with electrodes attached to their hands. We can go from preaching to meddling and wonder which parts of our brains would be activated if instead of rival football fans receiving the shocks were a man wearing a MAGA hat and a man wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. What about a Christian vs a Muslim? An American vs an Iranian? A transgender person vs a cisgender person? An ICE agent vs a protester? The list could go on. 

As much as most of us would like to think we would have equal empathy for all, or least not take pleasure in anyone’s pain, the evidence suggest otherwise. To be otherwise requires a watchfulness of the movements of our own hearts and discipline and practice to engage every other with something more than empathy. 

Suspicion of the outsider – xenophobia – is another natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It is part of our neurobiology. Our brains constantly judge whether circumstances or the people we encounter are safe. And our immediate impulse is to trust the familiar and mistrust the unfamiliar. We have a natural tendency to be wary of the other and cling to the familiar.

While xenophobia might seem like the opposite of empathy, I think they are related. Shared feelings within a group and suspicion of those outside the group build a sense of belonging. Belonging is good and the desire to belong is strong. But when those two reinforcing tendencies are amplified, belonging can become a toxic exclusionary bonding that divides the world into “us” vs. “them.” 

The leaders of cults and political demagogues are geniuses amplifying these two natural inclinations. They cultivate a toxic solidarity in which members of the group become the good, the innocent, the righteous while others are identified as guilty, threatening, dirty, sick, inhuman, vermin. 

People are particularly susceptible to being enticed by such unhealthy belonging in time of anxiety, uncertainty, and conflict. A strong, reinforced sense of belonging brings a sense of security. And highlighting the threat of enemies, real or imagined or contrived, reinforces group solidarity.

You don't have to be a cult leader or a demagogue. Cable news thrives on the same sort of thing. Those who reject empathy as toxic seem too often, intentionally or not, to be falling into this trap.

Some of those who reject empathy are arguing for “Kinism” which is the belief that Christians have a duty to prefer the members of one’s family – and by extension, one's ethnic group over any appeal to universal care. That basically endorses the selective empathy as natural and of God. This is a false teaching.

The are others who are suspicious of compassion as a feeling because fellow-feeling can sometimes lead to sympathy for those who are supposed to be rejected and condemned, making it harder to turn one’s heart from them. Those who talk of toxic empathy often sound like what they are really about is excusing the hardness of heart toward those whose anguish is inconvenient. 

We can agree that more empathy is not the answer. It is too fickle and too parochial. The inclination to have more empathy for those with whom I identify than with those with whom I do not might be natural in a biological sense. But it is not natural in the theological sense of what we are made for as being created in the image of God. It is not the way of the kingdom of God.

Our natural capacity for empathy can be transformed by God's grace into a more expansive and consistent compassion. There is nothing toxic about that. Our natural inclination to be suspicious of the other and have more empathy for those who are like us or in our group can be corrupted to reenforce a toxic solidarity indifferent to the anguish of the other. One measure of good faith is whether it encourages compassion for all or forms communities of us vs them.

Christians are called to something more than mere empathy – compassion, mercy, and solidarity with all. Our mercy and compassion are to be perfect as is that of our Father in heaven, making no distinctions (Matthew 5:45-48 & Luke 6:36). Christians are commanded to love even their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). Even as we resist those who are violent, deceitful, greedy, tyrannical, etc. we are called to do so with compassion and mercy toward them.

This is hard. It requires prayer and practice and discipline. And grace. But it is the better way.

An Apologia (Defense or Explanation) for Weighing in on Political Matters

I have been accused in the last month of being partisan due to my criticism of President Trump and his administration. I take that charge seriously. I try hard not to be partisan. I have mostly limited my criticism of the Trump administration to two or three areas of concern. But the gospel is about something and sometimes it has political implications. And in our current moment everything seems political. Just quoting scripture can be politically offensive.

FWIW, I have a reputation among those who know me for playing devil’s advocate. And I have track record of bi-partisan critique.

It is possible to support someone and then withdraw your support. It is possible for a leader to be so morally problematic that even winning with him or her would be losing.

I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, but not in 1996. I spoke out against the bombing in Serbia and the “collateral damage” of his use of cruise missiles elsewhere. I also spoke out against his dishonesty and infidelity. I argued that he should resign in the wake of the scandal resulting from his adulterous sexual behavior with an intern along with his lying to a grand jury. And the American people.

Some who supported Clinton’s policies squandered their credibility and compromised their soul defending and excusing his behavior. Gloria Steinem is the most notorious example.

Some preachers who castigated Clinton for his immorality and asserted that the nation’s leader should set a moral example did an about face when Donald Trump to the point of becoming sycophants for the latter. In doing so, men like Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Robert Jeffress, and Franklin Graham lost credibility as authorities on matters of morality. What was true under Clinton is no less true under Trump. We need leaders who exhibit a minimum of integrity, decency, and basic morality. It affects the soul of the nation.

I have not said much publicly about President Trump on the topics of honesty and sexual morality, though there is abundant material – not even counting his involvement with Epstein and his resistance to releasing those files.

I was critical of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq – on Christian Just War grounds as well as on worldly prudential grounds. I was called naïve and unpatriotic.

I said publicly that I thought Barak Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize was silly. I was  critical – multiple times – of his extrajudicial use of drones to kill people, including American citizens. I was critical of his handling of abortion in the Affordable Care Act. I pointed out the misleading spin coming out of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. I was critical of Obama’s expressing a progressive civil religion in his 2013 inauguration speech.

More recently, I got in trouble with some for criticizing his use of presidential pardons. I got significant push back and even got a phone call from someone who was concerned about how that might affect my reputation. I have said almost nothing about Trump's even more egregious use of pardons.

The thing is, I don't care that much about political parties or loyalties. It is hard enough to be loyal to Jesus, the Church, and the Christian vision without confusing it with political loyalties to party or particular leaders. I have little patience for knee-jerk parroting of a party line or knee-jerk defense of particular parties or leaders. When people default to talking about “the Right” or “the Left” I get suspicious.

I mostly speak out when I see leaders resorting to unnecessary violence (which from a Christian perspective includes most violence). That includes violent rhetoric, speaking about others with disdain or dishonestly, and a callous response to violence done. I am also bound by the vows I took when I was ordained a bishop to express Christian concern for the vulnerable and those on the margins. That includes immigrants and refugees. These have been the main focus of my critiques of President Trump and his administration.

As a bishop, I have no choice but to comment on occasion on currents if I am going to be faithful. That sometimes means commenting on political matters. I am by no means perfect. I am sometimes overly cautious. And, no doubt, I sometimes get things wrong. And I am not pretend to be altogether politically neutral. But some basic moral principles are more important. I do believe that it is essential for Christians to cultivate some detachment from party loyalty and even more so from any particular leader. For the sake of our souls.

Gollum's Choice or, What is Your Precious? Some thoughts on Judgment and Hell

“A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)

Last Sunday, during coffee hour after worship, a member of the congregation asked for my thoughts on judgment and hell. Then, I read that former television star (Full House) and Conservative Christian podcaster, Kirk Cameron, recently announced he had changed his stance on the doctrine of hell. He no longer believes in eternal torment, but rather that those who don’t go to heaven will instead be annihilated. While I think Cameron is right to reject the notion of eternal torment, I do not think “annihilationism” is an adequate alternative.

So, if not eternal torment or annihilationism, what? Do we just say everyone goes to Heaven or enters the kingdom of God regardless of the decisions they’ve made or the life they’ve lived? Such an easy universalism does not seem faithful to the scriptures or the Christian tradition.

A degree of humility is called for. As Paul said, “we see in a mirror dimly” and only “know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Attempting to take seriously the significance of our choices and the notion of God’s judgment I offer the following.

Smeagol was once a hobbit-like creature. A hobbit is an imaginary creature invented by J. R. R.Tolkien who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Short creatures with hairy feet, hobbits have been described as a cross between a rabbit and an English country gentleman. One day, Smeagol and a friend were fishing in a river. His friend fell into the water and swam or sank to the bottom of the river where he saw a bright and shiny ring. He returned to the surface and showed the ring to Smeagol. It happened to be Smeagol’s birthday and he asked his friend, or rather demanded of his friend, the ring as a birthday present. The friend refused for he had already given Smeagol his birthday present. Smeagol strangled his friend, took the ring and put it on his finger.

It was a magical ring. When he put it on, he was invisible. But it was also a cursed ring, and it began to warp Smeagol. It warped him such that he began to find the sun too hot and too bright. He took shelter in the caverns of a mountain. When we first meet him in the story he is no longer known as Smeagol but has been warped into a strange creature called Gollum because of the odd gulping noise he makes. When we first meet Gollum – formerly Smeagol – he lives on a small island in the middle of a lake at the dark heart of a mountain. There, he eats raw fish and speaks to his ring, which he calls, “My Precious”. Isolated from all other creatures, Gollum is alone, turned in on himself He is alone, that is, except for the ring – his “Precious.”

I have wondered if maybe hell is like what happened to Smeagol. God, in His fierce mercy, gives us freedom – freedom to choose our “Precious”. And we can possess whatever we choose to be our Precious – money, possessions, power, prestige, pleasure, etc. – to the bitter end. And beyond. What we choose for our Precious will either mold and shape us into something more beautiful and more human or it will warp us into something much less, like Gollum. That molding or warping continues beyond this life and God will allow us to continue to fall in on ourselves and our precious forever if we choose.

Scripture warns us that our choices have consequences and there will be judgment. In Hebrews 12:25 there is this stark warning. “How much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns us from heaven?” And, lest we think it’s just some peculiarity of the exhortation to the Hebrews, in the gospels, Jesus warns as well. In Luke 13, Jesus warns, “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The warning of judgment, whether we like it or not, (and I don’t particularly like it) is a part of Jesus’ message. And it shows up repeatedly in each gospel. It is a mistake to try to make Jesus less offensive by denying that judgment is part of his message. The Jesus of the gospels warns of judgment and calls us to repent. We ought not to ignore it or wish it away.

It is also a mistake, however, to take the images of hell too literally. Christians throughout history have managed to understand that the images of heaven in the Bible are metaphorical. Very few Christians die believing that when they awake they will pass through literal pearly gates and walk literal streets of gold and live in literal mansions with a cubicle for each of us. We understand that those images are metaphors pointing to something greater than we can imagine.

But somehow Christians have not been able, usually, to see same metaphorical interpretation of hell. We always seem to take the pictures of hell quite literally – a literal lake of fire in which people burn in agony forever and ever if they choose wrongly. We are familiar with those images. Paintings and graphic descriptions have impressed them on our imaginations. Such images of hell make God out to be a cosmic torturer. And that is hard to square with the rest of what Jesus reveals about the heart of God. The warning is to be taken seriously, but let’s not mistake metaphorical imagery for literal description. If the images of heaven are metaphorical, then so are the images of hell.

A bit of an aside: Such images of hell are not unique to Christianity. Those who say that we should ignore the differences between religions and just get down to that which they all have in common always intrigue me. They ignore the problem that one thing nearly every religion has in common is hell. There are Buddhist paintings of hell that are every bit as graphic and discomforting as anything described by Dante or depicted by Hieronymus Bosch.

It is also a mistake to morbidly dwell on hell. In spite of the impression some have given, hell is not the main point of Christianity. Too often the threat of hell has been used to scare people in order to control them. The primary reason for Jesus’ coming was not to scare the hell out of us. The primary reason for Jesus’ coming was to prepare a way or us and to point us towards the kingdom of God. As Charles Williams wrote,

“The order of purging is according to the seven deadly sins of the formal tradition of the Church. The Church is not a way for the soul to escape hell but to become heaven; it is virtues rather than sins which we must remember.” (TheFigure of Beatrice)

Still, we should not be complacent about the warning of judgment that we have in scripture. It is a warning that comes from Jesus. It would be a mistake to assume that God is just such a “nice guy in the sky” that he could never really judge us severely. Or that he merely says, “All-y, all-y, in come free!” While it is possible to make too much of hell, it is also possible to make too little. The judgment is real. There is no room for complacency.

Jesus is instructive. Asked a theoretical question in Luke 13 about how many will be saved, Jesus, as is his wont, refused to get into the theoretical or speculative. Instead, Jesus’ answer to the question makes it personal. “Don’t worry about how few or how many make it to heaven. If it ends up that only a few get in, that is God’s business. If it turns out that God, in his incredible grace and mercy, makes a way for all to enter, that also is God’s business.” Jesus says, “You strive to enter through the narrow door.” He makes it personal. Don’t worry about the particulars of what it’s like. Don’t worry about who else is in or out. You strive to enter the narrow door. Choose today who is your Precious.

Our choices matter in the short run and in the long run. We can choose wrongly. We can choose that which will warp us. It does matter how we live. It is not a matter of indifference whether we live lives of self-giving love or lives of self-centered, self-absorption. We can choose our Precious, and in the end, God may just allow us to live with whatever has been truly precious to ourselves – eternally. Our choice of what (or who) is our Precious will ultimately either mold us into something glorious or warp us into something terrible. That molding or warping begins now and continues eternally. C. S. Lewis expressed it this way in Mere Christianity:

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.”

Lewis elaborates on the point in his essay, The Weight of Glory:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

The Christian conviction is that Jesus also matters. Jesus did not come to scare the hell out of us; instead he came to show us what is eternally Precious. Indeed, he came to be our Precious. Our problem is, among other things, that we, in our sinfulness and our ignorance, find it difficult to recognize or receive what is truly Precious. There are many things vying to be our Precious. Jesus comes to break into our willfulness and ignorance and say, “I am your Precious. I am the way to all that is precious.”

But more than just showing us what our Precious is, Jesus frees us to pursue it. Our problem is more profound than just ignorance. We are born addicted to things that are not our true Precious. We are unable to deliver ourselves. Jesus Christ, on the cross and in his resurrection, breaks the bondage of that addiction, frees us to choose our true Precious – to choose him. Jesus is our Precious.

Being a hopeful universalist*, I still hope that (back to the analogy) maybe even Gollum, isolated and alone on the island at the dark and lonely center of the mountain, is not completely abandoned. Perhaps Jesus is still sitting beside him saying, “Smeagol, come back. Repent.” Maybe that’s what it means when we claim Jesus descended into hell. I hope that Dante was wrong when he wrote that over the gates of hell it reads, “Abandon all hope you who enter here.” I wonder if the God we know in Jesus Christ ever completely abandons hope. Is it possible that not even hell is God-forsaken and the relentless love embodied by Jesus pursues us even there? Wull God ever give up until he is “all in all”?

It might be harder there to reverse the soul’s momentum after death. Our hold on what has become Precious to us and the hold the precious has on us can make it hard to turn from it. As was the case with Gollum. And, if one does, there may be some painful recovery and rehabilitation involved. “It may be centuries of ages before a man comes to see a truth—ages of strife, of effort, of aspiration (George MacDonald). But I am inclined to believe, based on what we know of God as revealed in Christ, that God will never give up on those created in his image.

The warning is real. The promise is also real. Our hope is real. In Hebrews we read that we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken and therefore we do not need to be morbidly fearful of hell. We can give thanks. But in reverence and in awe, because we remember that our God is a consuming fire. Our choices matter. Jesus comes to us day by day, comes to us today, and says, “Choose today to enter in through the narrow door. Choose today who is your Precious.”

* “Hopeful universalist” is a term I learned from my seminary professor, Charlie Price. It is distinct from what might be called a “simple” or “complacent” universalism. Holding that no one can ultimately end in hell is as presumptuous as presuming to know exactly who ends there. It presumes on God’s freedom to judge. It also denies the glory and awfulness of human freedom. A hopeful universalist, on the other hand, while acknowledging God’s judgement, hopes that, in his relentless love, as demonstrated in Jesus, God never completely abandons the objects of that love. Hopeful universalists in the church’s history would include Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, with his sister, Macrina (On the Soul and the Resurrection, an excerpt of which is here), and Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac of Nineveh/Isaac the Syrian: The Second Part, excerpts of which can be found here) among the early theologians. More recent examples are F. D. Maurice (The Word "Eternal" and the Punishment of the Wicked), George MacDonald (The Consuming Fire), C. S. Lewis (along with the works quoted above, check out his book, The Great Divorce), Karl Barth, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (Dare We Hope That All Men be Saved?), Kallistos Ware (Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?) John Milbank (Universal Salvation in Christ: A conversation with Professor John Milbank), and David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved).

Scripture support for such a view might include passages such as Psalm 139:7-8, Acts 3:21,  1 Corinthians3:11-15 & 15:22-28, Colossians 1:20, 1 Timothy 2:4, 1 Peter 3:19, 2 Peter3:9. While these “hopeful” verses encouragingly point to the wideness of God’s mercy, they do not allow for complacency.