See also Dr. Radner's initial letter at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/assay52.html. Dr. Noll's response was originally online but has been removed by Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry LC. Dr. Noll has recently republished it here
You have made one of the most even-handed responses, not simply to what I wrote to fellow-clergy in Colorado, but to some of the presuppositions I have struggled both to define and to have guide my own choices within a difficult time in our church. I deeply appreciate what you say, how you say it, and the purposes for which your thinking and comments are deployed. Thank you.
I have had several responses from conservative church people, who have accused my convictions of contributing to our church's demise in orthodox teaching and witness. It is heartening to be taken seriously, and respectfully, even when there are major disagreements among us. As I have said elsewhere, my views may not, in fact, promote very effective strategies for the reform of our church; but they do not, for that reason, represent a subversion of our common commitments. The phenomenon of evangelical allies within the church turning their wrath upon each other is woefully frequent within our Christian history; but we would do well to avoid these examples as we move forward.
You rightly refer to a book I wrote, The End of the Church, as containing an elaborated discussion of points that in fact I apply in my practical thoughts shared within my own diocese. I'm glad I sounded consistent, between the two! I am hardly glad, however, that you and I find ourselves in a place where the particular argument of that book is given, for us, concrete bite -- to be accepted or not, with severe consequences. I would prefer that our life as a church today were not so burdened that arguments such as I make were even potentially applicable.
I am well aware that some of the basic commitments of that book, some of which you summarize well, must seem beside the point to many Christians who are engaged in vital and life-giving ministry and mission (you mention China, and so on). Indeed, my argument about the fundamentally compromised character and ANY church in our day, must seem contradicted over and over again by those whose Christian lives, in this or that community, bring light and hope and the form of Jesus into the midst of what is far from God. What purpose could I possibly have, in making this argument, except to tear down what is evidently good and to constrict what is evidently in movement? A few points of background first, then, and after that, just a few clarifications. My argument about the character of the divided Church, in which we find ourselves (and of which ECUSA is only one small part), derived from several practical realities I have long perceived: first, the flailing and often vacuous character of the ecumenical movement, despite its obviously sound and evangelical motives; second, the flailing and often vacuous and cacaphonic character of theological discourse and research, across denominational lines (in which people like us engage, often vainly); finally and most importantly, the historic impotence -- growing in its resounding incapacity -- of Christian witness against the forces of evil that have been consuming the modern world, despite astounding advances in evangelical fervor and missionary expansion.
Let me simply say something about the last, especially since you are going to Africa, a place where I too have had some time of work, whose residue has encouraged in me a good deal of thought. The assembled conference of Roman Catholic bishops in Africa not long ago wondered publicly about what had happened to the Church's witness in Rwanda, during the worst times of its recent civil explosion. That self-questioning was taken up and applied to many other areas of the continent; and we might rightly attach it to many other churches, in many other places. Let us not forget too quickly how the same question was asked about the horrors of Naziism only a few decades ago, in our own backyard.
There is no question that, apart from individual and localized Christian resistance (and martyrdom in some cases) to the evil that has enveloped so many societies in violence and cultural (economic and environmental) conflagration, Christians and the Christian church(es) have virtually no profile of redemptive witness in the midst of these events. The divisions among Christians in Africa and elsewhere -- here! -- now long-standing and even multiplying, bear -- I believe self-evidently -- some of the major responsibility. (Again, the evisceration of Christian community through the Catholic-Protestant split in Europe and America was one of the major factors in the Christian Church's horrendous failure to witness to the truth during the destruction of Jewry -- and other groups like homosexuals -- in World War II and after).
It would be worth investigating carefully how and why, but that cannot be done here. It is enough to say that, from my viewpoint, the Christian churches, for all the many members and leaders of integrity and self-sacrifice within them, are silent players before much of the misery of a fallen world (and that includes China), and their silence derives from a fundamental inability, and in most cases, refusal to be the Church with and through one another. The "fruit" or our recent Christian history, it seems to me, is much less enticing than you perceive. Much less. From where I sit in Colorado, one of the most economically vibrant states in our nation, with growing Christian churches in almost every community, most casual observers would note a profoundly destructive culture of materialistic idolotry, that has eaten at the soul of community and landscape alike, and in whose participation Christians are indistinguishable from others, despite their variously vaunted claims to pristine and Spirit-filled witness.
In trying to make sense of these kinds of observations, I have been led to consider the character of Christian unity as it is and has been assaulted, and to reflect on the tradition of the Church as it has engaged Scripture to clarify the meaning and purpose of intra-Christian relations. The book you mentioned represented one attempt at articulating some of the features of our dissipated common life that I surveyed. If it sounds Spenglerian, I suppose that was self-conscious (although I would prefer to see it as more Augustinian and that in several ways) -- we are dealing with an historical movement that, I assume, is divinely fraught, and whose only Scriptural unveiling -- but what an unveiling! -- is to be found in Israel's history.
Applying this figure to the Christian Church, I discovered, was both traditional and repugnant at once: for years, we have selectively looked at God's dealings with Israel, fulfilled in Christ Jesus, in order better to avoid the obvious truth (as I see it): that we have built our churches and pursued our missions with hearts fundamentally set in enmity towards fellow-Christians. The rejection of charity at the center of our ecclesial existences cannot be seen as a minor failing, given its historical and institutional underpinnings: in all we do, it informs who we are in God's eyes.
There is much to be said about all this, of course -- the theological arguments, the historical data, the Scriptural discernments. In the end, as you say, it is a "hypothesis", no more. And you and I and others will both see the evidence in differing lights, and offer differing theories to explain it. I await, however, another hypothesis that better sets all this in order. I have seen very little offered except self-justifying theses designed to uphold the peculiar characters of our mutual despisings.
Meanwhile, let me offer just a couple of clarifications in the light of your own comments. First, it is clear that ECUSA is a minor church within the drama of world Christianity. It hardly seems worth the effort to engage our internal relations in terms of the grand picture of God's dealing with "the Church". What possible difference could it make that people come and go from our beleaguered denomination, as they attempt to be faithful to their own callings and witnessings? On one level, it surely makes little difference at all! There are certainly churches and denominations that, at this given time, have more on the ball, are less fractured, seem less distracted by cultural perversions of the Gospel and so on (although the sexuality issue is not the only cultural perversion to the Gospel that besets churches -- and this fact, if analytically pursued, ought to give anyone pause before assuming that other seemingly "orthodox" denominations are truly so). As you point out, people come and go from parish to parish, from non-episcopal denominations to Anglican ones and so on. Is this all somehow forbidden or representative of some deep flaw in our Christian life?
My answer is that it is not forbidden, but yes, it IS representative of that deep flaw. Quite simply, if we cannot adopt the form of Christ in the church where we have been placed, we shall be in no position to do so in the larger Church, among Christians who now are separated, and whose separations bear the burden of obscuring the light of the Gospel. If I cannot learn to suffer for the truth in love in this place, as a Christian, I have little to offer Burundi. I say this carefully, as you and many others, myself included, visit or work or pray for nations seemingly distant from us, and seemingly immune from the base trajectories of developed Western life. (And I have seen the many Christians who have claimed to offer some new light to a violently riven culture, when their own hearts could not abide the small challenges of their riven communities at home. If it is not a blasphemy, this deluded self-offering, it is at least an empty sacrifice.)
Now you raise the question about lines in the sand, the "Baal test" and so on. It is a real question, when it comes to our church, and indeed, any church. Not only could it happen, but it has happened in the history of the church. There are even now, as you and I agree, true "heretics" in our midst, some of whom are leaders of the church. But here is just the problem: in the divided church, each of us have defined a different Baal. The centuries are littered with the churches who have rejected these differing Baals.
The Baal test sounds reasonable -- it is scriptural in part, although we should be careful in analysing just what God called an Elijah to, in relation to the whole people of Israel -- but its practical value within a "Church" that is really 3000 churches, is, to say the least, compromised. It is not so much that I don't think there is such a line, or that each of us should not make conscientious decisions in the face of idolatry, but that I believe it is useless to write the rule book ahead of time, and use it as a test before the fact. Quite simply, I will stay and oppose idolatry in the church as long as I can, and as long as those others who do it continue to do so also in such a way that I am confident of my ability to withstand error with the truth. This, of course, is one of my fears: that all the orthodox leaders of ECUSA will leave, gradually, making it harder and harder to hold on.
But they will not leave for the truth, guaranteed by their departure from falsehood. There is, in the 3000-faced church, much departure, but little arriving. They will, instead, leave for this and that -- for Rome, for AMA, for Eastern Orthodoxy and so on. They will not leave for a church growing in unity. They will leave for the church as it has been for centuries: divided and weakened. It is one of the ironies -- a divine irony -- of our Church, that truth is defended necessarily, it seems, by abandoning the structures of its potential power. Is there an alternative? I have been trying, even desperately, to identify it. And this is the alternative I see: simply dying, promoting the truth, though probably uncertain as to its real promise in the face of its abandonment around oneself, and one's own abandonment by fellow-defenders, dying -- figuratively, and perhaps corporately -- where one is. I have elsewhere argued towards this figure of Jeremiah as the right alternative. More importantly, I think that this latter alternative is the Scriptural one most particularly in its Christic form.
Here we come to what is NOT a hypothesis: the figure of Jesus, and the way of His walking. I suppose that I should not be surprised that this figure seems to have had so little effect on our thinking about intra-church relations, about the facing of error with the truth among the people of God. For so long, we have read e.g. "Phariseeism" as the embodiment of heresy, and heresy as the object of abominated wrath -- a habit that gained historical flesh in the Christian treatment of Jews -- that we have little room in our logical arsenal to approach Jesus' relation to his religious opponents on anything other than the level of spiritual (and often political) warfare.
I am nonetheless, I must admit, somewhat startled, Stephen, to hear you describe Jesus' attitude towards the Pharisees as something other than the kind of "evenhanded" engagement you (nicely enough) attribute to me -- admire their virtues, but oppose them face to face where they are wrong. How else would we describe the combination of his exhortation to learning from them (Mt.23:2), and his attack on their character (Mt. 23:27)? Or his explicated subversion of aspects of their teaching, from foods (cf. Mk.7:19) to lepers, along with his familiar and amicable engagement of their hospitality and friendship (cf. Lk.7:40ff)? Or, to move from Phariseeism to Saduceeism, the way he openly challenges their rejection of the fundamental redemptive act of His own history -- the resurrection (Mk. 12:18ff.)-- even while he continues to worship with them, and receive from them the fruits of their sacrifices?
Whatever the complicated character of Jesus' attitude towards the varying religious leaderships of his day -- and it IS complicated, far more complicated than Christians have dared admit -- I simply do not see how we can avoid the overall shape of His life as lived among a people who ultimately rejected and sought to wipe out the traces of His truth. That shape is defined, from first to last, by a commitment to the common worship of the Temple, even in its organization by His enemies. Over and over again, we hear of his participation in the Temple's life; he even exhorts his disciples to pay the Temple tax (Mt. 17:24ff -- a rather significant episode in the present context of ECUSA); and He dies at the hands of those with whom He is intent on continuing prayer. Not only this, His own disciples maintain this connection, from the beginning of Acts to its end -- St. Paul, the great "destroyer" of Jewish particularity, gives himself over to his eventual death, because he submitted to a Temple vow, at the encouragement of his less "enlightened", more "timid" brethren in Jerusalem.
I know that there are many potential "counter-examples", from both the Old Testament and New Testament -- examples of separation, repudiation, and even destruction of those who oppose the truth of God, within God's people. But I see no way to uphold the primacy of Jesus as the fulfillment of all the Scriptures, other than to allow these counter-examples to give way to Jesus' own form, and to be interpreted in His light. I hear this all the time: what shall we do with Paul's exclusivism? Or Jude's (your example)? Or Revelation's? But I answer, What will you do with Jesus? He must be first. If we accept this, it is possible to read the others, as God's Word truly, but as God's word of judgment, that is taken up in the sacrifice of Jesus which we are truly to embrace.
No doubt God has allowed the Church to be judged through the separations, exclusions, and destructions of her people, one among the other. We can see the attitude of a Paul or Jude, in this or that situation, as just and right, within God's providence. But this recognition on our part does not demand that they be used, in this or any other instance, as examples, unless they conform to the governing figure of Jesus' own life. And this kind of hermeneutic is hardly novel; it represents, in its broad form, the kind of approach the early Fathers adopted in the face of the diversity of Scriptural descriptions, which they also rightly understood to demand some ordering of reference, wherein Christ was the point of that ordering. It represents, in the end, the proper fashion in which the unity of the Scriptures is allowed to be more than a principle, but an ascetic fact.
I might add that St. Paul himself -- and this is crucial to apprehending the manner in which his actions must be subsumed into the exemplary figure of Christ, and not allowed to stand alone -- adopted a number of differing attitudes towards false teaching. In cases where he was not able, it seems, to effect an exclusion of misleading teachers -- e.g. in the matters mainly alluded to in 2 Corinthians -- he was content to let the character of his sufferings, conformable to Jesus' own, be the basis of his "power" (cf. c. 11). And power is important in this, as in any situation in which the church finds herself struggling. So noted, as Paul himself is forced to note at times, it is the power of Christ's weakness that demands obedience, not some other.
And if we "have in mind" this "form" of Jesus Christ (cf. Phil.2), we must, it seems to me, as individuals and as bodies within the Body, make every effort to let this form be ours, to "plan" for this form, to "strategize" for this form, to pursue this form, to let no one dissuade us from this form, and for no other form. Instead, it appears, we spend our efforts on planning to avoid this form, to run from this form, to find reasons for assailing this form as "ineffective", as "acquiescing", and the rest. It is no more contradictory for me to affirm commitment to the Body of Christ within the institutional relation in which I am placed, and to do so ready to "oppose face to face" that which is false within it, than it is for Jesus to have witnessed to the truth He was, from the Father, even while he did not separate himself from the leaders of the Temple by whom He was crucified. One of the great victims to the present struggle in our church has been the integrity of obedient dissent. Revisionists have mocked it, leaders have evaded its imposition, and now the orthodox deride its imperative as somehow antithetical to the "truth". When the Gospel's Master simply embodied it for all to see.
It is worth dwelling for a moment, in this context, on the question of "effective" witness. I have no doubt that this is the main reason why some fellow conservatives find views like mine unpersusaive, maybe naive, and perhaps even traitorous. Behind all the arguments, and Scriptural citations (although, in fact, there are fewer of these than one might expect), there is the hovering unease, regret, and anger over the fact that our church has not changed its course, despite pleas and discussions and patience and godly admonition, and not a little prayer and self-sacrifice. All the worry over "lines in the sand" and test-cases, and proofs of apostasy, documented and disseminated, seem to arise from the deep need to be able, at some point, even now, to say, "it is enough! I can do no more" -- I am tired, I am hurt, I am betrayed... AND WHAT IS THERE TO SHOW FOR IT ALL?
First, an observation: these are the questions of Gethsemane. Let us be aware that they are the questions long ago asked by One whose inquiry rustled the universe.
Second, an encouragement: these questions were also answered, by the One whose path became the gateway to heaven, thereby allowing one answer to be the answer for all, because it is the answer of the Prince of Life.
Third, a warning: the running from this answer is the loss of bearings, the foundering of hope, the retreat of vision. It may not seem so at the moment, but it leads to the barricade long ago made "for fear of the Jews".
What counts as an "effective" witness to the truth, and when shall we count it so? You bring up the obviously moot proposal I made several years ago for a "moratorium". Clearly, the proposal itself was "ineffective" because it was never taken up; as a particular strategy for avoiding doctrinally destructive conflict, it surely failed. But the theologically-informed hopes that fueled the articulation of this proposal are not for that reason invalid, nor even "ineffective". They inform me, and, more importantly, many other priests and Christian laypeople still, who still labor and serve, teach and heal, by God's grace, and with an inestimable integrity marked by divine love, whose reward -- that is, whose properly esteemed "effect" -- will surely have warranted their devotion. How long should we wait for the "effect" of Jesus' life and death? How long for the outcome to the Temple prayers of the first apostles? Francis submitted to the venality of corrupt church leaders; was he thereby "ineffective" in the fruit of his labors? Wesley's Methodists today are divided by EXACTLY the SAME nest of false teaching as ECUSA. How shall we judge his effectiveness?
The criterion, it seems to me, however human in its allure and comfort, is one best pushed aside in all our deliberations. The church's, any church's visible society demands the best efforts of our ordering minds; to strategize for truth's institutional reception, is surely a fair calling. But these are ad hoc responses that we must give, and we must always be willing to let them go in the face of faithfulness, whose "fruit", while real, is both slow to catch the eye, and often lost amid the world's deformations of our vision. Given the history of our Church's contested life, which now lives under judgment, and whose failures we are being forced to face and bear, I would not put much store in betting on whose crops the reapers of this age will most happily garner. If the Cross is folly to the world, it is a hammer, a crushing stone, to God's people in their blindness.
Would Louie Crew be willing to accept a Moratorium on sex-related resolutions now, you ask. [See Louie Crew's answer] The implication is that, of course, he has "won", and has no reason, with his party, to entertain accommodation with traditionalists any longer. But we are all old enough, in our minds' apprehension of God's providence, to know that "winning", just like "effectiveness" is not a tool that mortals wield. We have no grasp of it at all. I shall continue to work within this church in particular, difficult though it may be, in a way that desists from my own desire to say, "to hell with it".
That is the cup I believe is being offered for me, but not for me alone, to drink. Of course, I cannot claim some divine counsel - beyond the vision of Christ in the Gospels -- that directs the particular actions of all of us, as we seek our way, with some integrity, through the ecclesial mire of the moment. I would not, however, have offered my letter to fellow clergy, had I not thought it right that they join me in my staying. Right, and good. These are not abstract matters for any of us. I live and work in a church where what you do and what another does affects my day's schedule, my congregation's spirit, my duties and my callings. I work to assuage fear, to answer questions, to appeal for calm, to correct error, and I do so with "brothers and sisters", with them, sometimes in spite of them, and always for them. It would be foolish for me to say that I do not need you, or any other of my friends and colleagues in this church, and that each of us must merely "discern our own calling", as if such individual insight was sufficient to fulfilling our duties before God. We are not alone or on our own in these decisions.
It is perhaps ironic that persons like Louie Crew find this message more appealing than many of my orthodox brethren. To some of the latter, this only demonstrates the inner rot of what I have to say. Look!, they point out, the liberals eat this stuff up! "Stay in the church no matter what" is just the license they need swiftly to do their work! What better proof of Neville Chamberlain redivivus in this kind of Faustian bargain for easy coexistence. But I wonder... It is possible that the Body knows its needs even as we sleep. I gratefully accept the recognition, however muddled, that the church, and I myself, dies a little, as it is left behind little by little.
Thanks for the attention, Stephen, and God's blessing on your new work and new place of service.
Peace -- Ephraim
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