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

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1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

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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.