On Stability
At the beginning of an essay by the late great missiologist Andrew Walls, he notes how different expressions of the Christian life have been so diverse as, probably, to have made it hard for them to recognize each other as kin: the Jerusalem Church, a Celtic saint standing in the freezing water of a stream, a Mass in the high middle ages, 19th century evangelicals gathered in Albert Hall, and a contemporary African Spirit church. This came to my mind while on retreat at a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico (for which time Steph and I are grateful). The common life of that tradition has been consistent for a millenium and a half, and they themselves value stability. But the wild range of Gospel stands in seeming contrast to this continuity, and it raises the question of the ‘one and the many’ in our faith.
Paul in Ephesians 4 gives the definitive answer (which we repeat at every baptism): ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’ Just because Christians have debated the nature of each doesn’t mean they aren’t an anchor nonetheless. A gloss on Paul’s answer might be the following. Invariably, for all their differences, Christians have book, bath, table, and flock (with pastor), and invariably they pray, proclaim,serve, and suffer. We as Anglicans have usually wanted to add clarifying notes: book- read with the creeds, chief pastor as bishop, praying both formal and not, etc. But we have had a consistent ecumenical urge, born of the fact that we know we are not complete, and so we welcome inclusive spirit of the generalization. We can see the Church across time as indeed one, shining, messy, obscured, restored, contested, all these at once though it be.
The Benedictines were wonderfully adapted as outposts for mission in medieval pagan Europe (and forebears of our own traditions). Types will come into being, and have their ending, though the gates of hell will not prevail against the whole enterprise (Matthew 16:19). And how we think of the basics of Church life matters a great deal. Still, in a time when the future prospects of the Church seem murky, I take solace in this notion that some shapes or other of Church, with the endoskeleton described above, bearing our family resemblance, are bound to appear as outposts in some new kind of middle ages and some new pagan wilderness.
Peace,
+GRS
