Bishops' Blog

Living Up or Down?

    I have recently finished the British philosopher (and Anglican) Roger Scruton's prestigious Gifford Lectures (called 'The Face of God'), and commend them as beautiful, accessible, and deep. He is really addressing the most basic of theological questions: how can we speak of God who is, utterly unlike us, 'immortal, invisible, only wise.'  All the answers in theological tradition work by analogy: God is in some degree like x (e.g. reason, being, love), but also unlike them in that He is more and beyond. In answer to this question, and so as a commentary on the claim in Genesis 1:26 that the human is 'in the image of God,' Scruton focuses on three words that capture what it is to be a human: 'I', 'you,' and 'why.’ What is it about these three features of humanness that offer a window on God?

    Scruton begins with the now common materialist and scientific account of the world and so ourselves, as a collection of entities and forces determined by scientific law and genetics. This account is true enough in its own sphere - it answers well certain questions. The trouble is there are things it just can't get at. We have a direct experience of ourselves, of deciding to do things, of speaking to others. To give a reductive account of them doesn't explain them.  As a result we 'live down' to such an account of human nature, rather than account which addresses what is most distinctive of us.

      We ourselves as persons are a perspectives on the things of the world, on the 'edge' of the world of things, not separate from nor dissolved into the world of things. We as persons speak to and hear from other persons - as separate things we are bodies but not persons, though we are embodied too. And all of this doesn't say anything yet about God, only that the world is stranger...than is dreamed of (in a reductionist) philosophy.

    We are persons, inclusive of but not reducible to our bodies. As such we have an angle of approach to who God is, for He is a person too, and addresses Thous, and beginning and end of our 'why's'. But we have only an inkling thereby- His I, Thou, and why are real but far beyond ours (as a reading of Exodus 3, according to Scruton, shows).

     I offer these thoughts as a commendation of the work of Scruton, who offers a readable natural theology in this personalist and aesthetic tack. I look forward to a chance to hear this important Christian philosopher here in Dallas.

 Peace

+GRS

Who's Your Daddy?

If you were to take a standard seminary course on Anglicanism, and hear who the seminal figure was for the catholic liberalism that prevails in the Episcopal Church, you would hear tell of F. D. Maurice. He taught in London in the mid-19th century. He was shy and academic, but a bit of a rebel too, refusing as he did to subscribe to the 39 Articles. It is always good to look back at the major figures in a movement, since it helps us to see where depreciation has begun at the edges of its edifice. I have been reading him lately, and want to offer three Maurician themes for today.

1. Universalism? Maurice believed that all creation was already in Jesus Christ. He has reconciled the world to himself! (II Corinthians (5:19). In this he has a certain unlikely affinity to the great modern neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, and more distantly, to Greek church fathers who believed in the 'apokatastasis,' the gathering of all in all in Christ. What are we to make of all this?

If we are to take Maurice's view to be a rejection of final judgment and eternal loss, I cannot join him. There is too much about these themes in the New Testament, and God honors the integrity of His own creatures too much. Just the same, we need to note something of worth in Maurice's view. The scope of salvation derives from a deep appreciation of Christ's victory.  He is the active agent of this cosmic work. It does not come from a divine shrug or from a simplistic doctrine of a good creation alone with no need of Christ. If Maurice errs, it is at least in the service of a vast conception of Christ's work. The same cannot be said of the easy universalism so often found today.

2. 'The kingdom of Christ.'  Maurice lived at a time coming to terms with the pluralism among the churches and within the Anglican Church itself. Here too he wanted to push through to the inner spiritual reality of Christ dwelling with His people. Maurice refused to see parties within Anglicanism as antagonists, but rather as dimensions or trajectories on the truth, which require one another.  The truth in Christ for the Church requires a dialectic, flint against flint. I associate such ideas with what one might call a 'good liberalism,' providing  intellectual provision and room for one's opponent.  Have we lost some of this spirit in contemporary Episcopalianism?

3. 'Christ among the religions.' The question of how to understand the pluralism between the religions has been a hot topic for several generations. Already in the mid-19th century Maurice was one of the theologians that could discern some perception of the divine, and some complementary role, in the religions. But they need Christ as their summation and perfection. This approach has come in for strong criticism in the 20th century. But at least he was raising the question, and at least he was placing Jesus Christ at the center of his 'inclusivist' answer. Sometimes a wrong answer for the right reason makes a worthy contribution too.    

In all three areas and others as well we do well to recall a seminal Anglican catholic with a vision more truly liberal and more deeply Christocentric than those of many of his grandchildren.

Peace,

+GRS